I kick off boots to find blisters, like broken
cherries soaking the white cotton,

and outside the snow becoming its own branches
and roofs and steeples, every angle hugged

until the whole afternoon
is somehow less sharp –

I was not slower than my despair,
I could walk out, fresh-socked,

band-aided into the blizzard. But the way
white gushes down and every shape

becomes a mere shroud, the way the seconds smother me,
a branch falls and my spine follows sluggishly.

I flinch at the thought of taking space, of anything
as slight as sleet proving me solid. Instead I stay in bed,

pitted, laying long like a twig. And I think of God, of all things
I think of God, but the only prayer I know is famine.

Mariana Kovalik Silva is a poet born and raised in Brazil, but she spends most of her time in the U.S., pursuing her education. Her work was featured or is forthcoming in the California Quarterly, Blue Marble Review, DoveTales Journal, Passengers Journal, and the Two Groves Review.