[Issue 2026.75]

‘The Weight of Winter’, Kaya Skovdatter

Art © 2026 Leyelle M.G.

There is a wound here, set deep.
A tether strung between two bodies.
Held taut by faces beneath frozen pools,
veined in blue ice and
hemmed by winter woods.
Their black trunks a loose orrery
of bare branches rising in anemic arc
to claw at the sky;
a starlit weave of portents and assays.

Answers found in the form of the cold ghost
in the cellar, body buried deep.
In photo albums in the attic. Yellowing. Frayed.
In family skeletons scrimshawed
in wormwood ink and mantle-mounted.
In the whistle of wind through cavernous barns.
In the claw-click of owl talons on frozen wood;
of white feathers hunkered on a hayloft ledge,
a mouse caught in tattered halves,
torn twixt beak and claw.
In the whisper of a cat padding down creaking stairs.
And in frigid floors tickling unshod feet.

Answers in the absence of your hand
on my breast. Of your cheek not nestling in after.
The total absence of your heat;
the air still with hoarfrost,
window panes glistening silver-white.

All the small, early morning hauntings
of an empty house.
Of being caught between here and not.
Of fingers pressed against glass.
Of the weight of being unsure
which of us lies buried in the cellar,
and who wanders still.
Of your voice. Echoing in my head.
Like an empty house. Breathing.

© 2026 Kaya Skovdatter

[Issue 2026.75]

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