A-minor

by Michelle Bailat-Jones

The year the snow formed
tiny daggers each time it fell,
they came to stay at my house.
I was pregnant but it was still
early weeks when new life
might be too fleeting to mention.
The hillside of knives mirrored
our division inside – right, left.
Like the first directions
you teach a child, hoping
it will help them never get lost.
Hospitality is a sliver, too.
We argued over left and right,
over losing. We argued late
into the night, contempt threatening
at the edges. But opening
the window to smoke his cigar,
I saw that he knew, that he’d guessed
about that possible life. In the morning
the blades of snow had softened,
and we all stepped out to see
the slick, glittering fields of ice,
to look up at the sky, together,
blinded and nervous, but careful
now to say how perfect it was,
how easy and beautiful and clear.

Michelle Bailat-Jones is a novelist and literary translator living in Switzerland. In 2023 she was a resident writer at the Jan Michalski Foundation for Writing and Literature. Her short fiction, translations and criticism have been published in a variety of journals, both online and in print.