by Sarah Manguso
Someone else shared his first sentence. The snow falls here in white sheets. We were leaving for a new place, but it was one we had read about. The snow falls here quietly and muffles. The snow falls here when you aren’t looking. Then on the plane I imagined drawing in the snow there, living in it, raising a family in it. The snow would be deep enough to sculpt. People would get lost in it. The snow, my snow, would fall not only in sheets, but in pillars and ropes and cascades. There would be cities made entirely of snow. Then we took turns describing the ice-people we would find hiding in their watery castles. When the plane landed, we found barely a dusting, as though drawn on-as though it could be wiped clean away with one hand.
-from The Captain Lands in Paradise: Poems