by Carla Ferreira
Dear Blizzard:
where I am not, I waited for you last year
in every inch of sunshine
that greeted Cambridge
in bitter cold, frosted air
bleeding the thin cuticles
of my chapped hands holding library books. And now you've come and
I am not there.
Though I've promised my friend that this night
would be the one in which I would finally write a poem about
sex and calculators, I find myself writing to you instead:
the sweet snow that
never fell in feet outside
my window, and oh,
that bitter want to dive knee deep
into piles and piles of you in the hush
that only snow can bring to a courtyard.
On the other side of the Atlantic,
my mind wanders, following
each of your snowflakes
freewheeling down Mount Auburn,
down Mill Street, down each street,
each quiet alley. I imagine
you skating along the breadth
of the Charles as you call the city
into slumber, and you leave me here:
Sincerely,
hibernating: desire as transparent and thin
as paper snowflakes cut with shaky hands and clumsy scissors.
Carla Sofia Ferreira is the daughter of Portuguese immigrants and a teacher from Newark, New Jersey. She wrote a creative thesis in poetry at Harvard College and became a first-generation graduate student in earning her MPhil at the University of Cambridge. Her poems have appeared in The Lascaux Review, amberflora, Cheat River Review, Glass, and Bone & Ink Press among others. She currently teaches English Language Development to immigrant high schoolers in the Bay Area.