Survivor’s Guide to Sex
 
 
Two days before the declared frost, cold snap.
You wake to find the fields a bank, stalks
lost to morning light. Walk through wheat,
stems snap, brittle with cold. Look
into an ear: each kernel is brushed white.
You notice details like that more often
now—how, when wheat bends under the weight
of ice its hair catches in the frozen mud and
can’t yank free, even in a strong wind.
Look into the swallow-less sky. Calculate
the acres of ruin, the acres of what
can be saved. Then return. He is just finishing
his toast. Or return and find him still asleep or
do not return. Go into the field. When you walk
over the spiculated ground, it will be like
walking over the tiny bones of your own
inner ear. As you walk, you will recite
your litany of at leasts and add one more.
At least take off your shoes, feel the blades
of frost opening your skin like relief.