Chicopee Two Boys

Wet leaves rust the ground
three days after Christmas. 
 
Too warm. So who can say why 
they went out onto the ice,
 
except that they are / 
were boys. So easy
 
to forget about the current below 
until it’s unraveling around you. 
 
They find one, fly him to Boston, 
but he dies the next day.
 
We wait to hear about the second,
in front of TVs, phones,
 
news tickers streaming 
across the bottoms of screens.
 
I search “Chicopee two boys” 
over and over, drag my thumb, refresh, 
 
hear myself tell you 
that I am late. 
 
And so we wait.
In and out of the bathroom,
 
each time wondering what I’ll find,
whether my body is up to something.
 
This place has a history of losing 
children to snow and ice.
 
The hole in the frozen river,
cracking, falling away, expanding.
 
The space between my hips 
widening like a galaxy.
 
Motherhood, drifting down the river 
and maybe, if we’re lucky,
clinging to the reeds.