And when she returned in April, her thick hair cropped
like grass above her ears, she could no longer imagine
herself walking where the table hushed and the bed
became a crazy quilt. So who would tell her what

she needed, why she had gone and where she was
the joyless one? Grandma had descended into the cellar, slipped
and frozen to the floor, and three days later when
her friends came looking, said her false teeth chattering

on the kitchen sink had kept her alive. Couldn’t die
wifout fem in her mouth. Of course, that was January
and now it was snowing out of season, the trees

losing their definition like a sheet. Perhaps her father
could still find her if she slipped in like the child
who slipped outside in a snow storm and drifted away.

Lois Marie Harrod