Where The Hoarfrost Blooms

Photo by Stephanie Hanno Photography

A Poem by Heather Cadenhead

I told you I’d be back soon—just needed 

some night air, just needed to stamp my boots

into the quicksand of wet mulch and cigarettes

outside our handful of coffee-scented rooms. 

The town comes into view: painted roses 

on brick walls—a hoax on salted streets— 

and neon signs that blink prophecies 

like ten-dollar palm readings and final days 

for furniture shops, La-Z-Boys under fluorescent. 

A man with eyes like lumps of coal gathers 

winter-bleached logs from a stack outside 

a shanty, his breath a swan skimming 

the night. His stare assesses my fortitude. 

I pick up speed, recalling the doe 

in my kitchen window: fallen soldier, 

caramel memory. How I watched 

vultures pull apart her body. 

Her softness meeting teeth. 

I hear my own footfall, heavy over blacktop, 

and search dark yards for cold-hardy blooms:

your wintergreen boxwoods, 

North-starred with white lights.

Heather Cadenhead's writing is published or forthcoming in Ekstasis by Christianity Today, Autism Speaks, The Rabbit Room, Valley Voices, Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith, Reformed Journal, The Clayjar Review, Radix Magazine, and elsewhere. Previously, she was a recipient of the New Plains Review Editorial Prize. Her poem, “Illiterate,” was nominated for Best of the Net. She lives in Tennessee with her husband and their two children.