Colleen Rothman: A New Space
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
A new space for each day
doesn’t necessarily mean progress. In motion, it’s possible to feel closer to an object as it passes further away. Unmoving, I sit near the sunroom window that overlooks our berried hollies, the winter sky cloudless and bright. Beneath this quilt, wool-socked toes I hope will warm before my sick kid wakes. I saw a woman at Target wearing a sweatshirt that said I’m freaking freezing. How tragic, to build an identity around being cold. Then I remembered the nor’easter from an article I skimmed in one of the nine hundred open tabs on my phone. Maybe you’re busy shoveling, rosettes of royal icing dotting your spruce. Your oldest might have a snow day. Are you working from home, too? I didn’t finish reading the article, to be honest, but I left the tab open. I don’t like to think about how far away you are, that I inhabit a sub-tropical climate alien to yours, where if you leave an unwrapped truffle outside on a December afternoon, it’s likely to melt. Another thing I doubt you’d understand. Maybe it’s best that we’re both busy with the weather and kids out of school, distracted from thinking about this space, and whether & when you will call.
Colleen Rothman's poems have appeared in HAD, Voicemail Poems, Juke Joint, and elsewhere. She lives in New Orleans, where she edits Nurture: A Literary Journal. Learn more at colleenrothman.com.
