At dusk, the snow is determined as ever.
What a negligée, I think
and name the sky, while I’m at it,
The Great Womb of Beyond.

The storm’s after-birth, light
as ash on the lawn—

all day, children ran from their homes
to lie down in it, called back
to their room of silence.

From my window, I watched the trees
watch the children’s swaddled bodies
unfurl into the blankness.

I’m telling you,
their limbs were deliberate
as speculums, attentive as veins.

—

Katie Condon is the author of Praying Naked, winner of the 2018 The Journal Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize. Her recent poetry appears in the New Yorker, Ploughshares, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day. She is an assistant professor of English at Southern Methodist University.