This is Gunwald’s first winter

in the cold earth;

he who every day, during my morning reading,

had his moment on my chest,

close to my face,

so near

that his breath felt like small puffs

against my cheek,

when his breaths

– four fitting within each of mine –

still offered me his love

His absence is a kind of quiet violence

that aches within me;

a method of exclusion,

a never that sings softly in my harsh survival

Outside, the wind tears at the tall pines,

so fiercely that I huddle in the Big Ship of Dreams,

instinctively bracing for their fall

over the house

It’s Gunnis’ first winter in the cold earth,

down in the northeast corner of the pasture,

and my first winter since he took me in,

so long ago,

as I walk up here in an endless without,

in forests and winds,

still dressed in his trust,

his unconditional love,

as I drag myself

across the anonymous tundra of days

with burning eyes