Fingerprints

Fingerprints smudge windows, blur clarity of glass, mar views, life, my certainty that winter trees are exactly what they seem – roots, trunks, empty branches spread across empty skies.
Until you stop my cloth from wiping them off.

Now, with a flick of fingers, prints adorning windows become impossible flowers, spiral-winged butterflies, a dog’s loopy smile, lush summer leaves.

A piece of carpet becomes a cloud or a boat sailing on a lake that once was a water spill damaging my floors.

Pebbles fallen from shoes, cluttering my foyer, become a queen’s necklace, intricate, beaded with bits of mud, designed with a jeweler’s care. Breadcrumbs on my table become pointillist paintings of a rabbit’s ears, or a cat’s whiskered nose. Dust, persistent, dirtying my dresser, becomes a canvas for your shadow art, your elaborate swirls.

A scratched steel pot that I forgot to throw out is now a container for treasures and unknown pleasures. When I ask, what is inside? you show me my face caught in the pot, smiling in its hollows.

Outside my window, winter trees gleam, silhouetted by a sky full of silver.