Winter makes me want to:

clack peppermint sticks along my teeth like boys dragging sticks against whitewashed fences in film summers that spin and spin on the reel, whirring and flashing like a bicycle wheel

lay my neck on the guillotine edge of a metal sink, cut my spine with tap water and dye my hair rust red from a box (because I am iron just now learning how to breathe)

run a shaving razor up my calves in the shower so my fingers graze the stubble rows, stark and shorn like lines of harvested corn stalks sticking up from a layer of frost; wait for my snow-pale skin to melt, to run away and join the hot water like the daughter I am

tuck my arms into my mother’s red coat, step out onto the patio with bare feet until the blood runs blue and slow; go back inside, shed the coat and curl my toes, feel the burning bee-buzz of my soles’ atoms humming like summer against the carpet