what she meant to say

It wasn't the poem she wrote. Those lines were ornament, a pantomime, a jazz-hands metaphor. It's what she meant to say. About the give of the couch when you hold someone in their astonishment and grief. About the sharp taste of bourbon on the tip of the tongue when the truth comes out, and how that one motion plucks you off the pedestal of your own feigned innocence. About a Tuesday mid-winter and another rash of snow coming, and about lying in the dark and feeling the breath of the one you love while the night sky dimples with clouds. What she meant to say was something about patience and about company, and about the quiet, drifty warmth that falls to her shoulders out of nowhere - a shared roll halved by butter, the sleepy glances from the dog, the silhouette of branches on the back deck that make a jagged frame of the moon - when she knows, for certain, she is not lost. What she meant to say is tucked under, like wool socks in the weave of an heirloom blanket. Hidden but felt. Elusive but known. She recognizes its particular softness, the warmth of it, bowed down at the knees, making a promise to her skin.