No Longer in New England
Poems About Home
Its snowing,
at least that’s what the windows tell me.
It piles on the rails of my neighbor’s deck,
the red one where they sit
every morning when the temperature is tolerable.
I watch them sip slowly at their coffees
and hold hands. But the deck is vacant now and
the powder stacks in skinny white lines
on every skinny black branch.
Sometimes New England hurts.
There’s a flat cold that bites,
the kind that you have to survive in as
you run the short distance from
the door to your car.
I am angry at it as soon as it assaults me.
I am offended that it tries to kill me.
What kind of manners are those?
My little vapid city doesn’t feel
any affection for me even though
I have called it home for twenty two years.
It looks on me with apathy,
just another spoiled child,
wishing for California.
Another child who lets each winter
chip away larger pieces of her resolve.
Another child too soft to
freeze and survive.
more by NOELLE CURRIE
photograph by Amarpreet Kaur
