She can hold up four fingers: she understands
that next month she’ll be 4.
Already she remembers scenes, so many—
her mother walking in through the front door
with her wrapped-up baby brother;
that time the big dog gobbled up her toast
before she could take a single bite; that day
a bad man pushed her so hard on the swing
she spun out, landing face down in the dust.
Also, sometimes, some first happy thing
she barely senses anymore—
a soapy bath toy, warm in her baby hands?
All of that has made her who she is
right now, a girl with pictures in her head
from a place he called the South,
her grandfather whose house she plays outside
where there’s a falling whiteness that her mouth
takes in as ice cream: of all her memories,
this is the first one she will claim
even into old age. How could she know
that everything that’s happened until now
would melt away in time,
except the snow?
This poem appears in the February 2026 print edition.
