We’ll build one last snowman before winter’s dance beat peters out, shadows elongated in shortened night, a sandman at bay
until you watch our snowman melt and I flee to my childhood garden. I find things are growing here now but I only remember that body temps drop
when drinking and that curses grow, too. I wade through watered flowerbeds like the gentlest of fairies, pick perfect parcels of poison which seem to cry as their stems snap out of spring’s new soil. I’ll tell him I steeped tea, that it’s spiked and I’ll tell him I’m sorry it took me so long to water the flowers.
Preston Smith (he/him) is an MA candidate in literature and an editor for Periwinkle Literary Journal, and his debut chapbook Red Rover, Red Lover released in 2020. He is on Twitter (and Instagram!) @psm_writes. His poems appear in Black Bough Poetry, Nightingale & Sparrow, and Pink Plastic House, among others.