my cousin points to a sentence, says try
to translate this. I do not understand
the way the nouns decline. in my new
language there are fifty-six words
for wind, more than a hundred for snow.
as humans we are bound, noosed
by weather systems. by the indomitable
cold. in the old calendar Iceland has six
months of vetur. we sleep, drink glögg
through the dark, trudge through the slabb
that comes with vor and signals warmth.
my language is a thawing season.
at night I watch myself come unglued—molting
a former self into crackling grass. my skin
flakes into a landscape the dead-yellow
of summer, the red of desert clay. in dreams
I am haunted by Ísland, by gray, by lava
fields that are never as hot against my feet
as I need them to be. where the rain drives
black-eyed and sharp—an eclipse in horizontal
sheets. this, my mara, my slush-slick streets.
all stick, all dirt, all treacherous ís.
