that I remember less

than the steps I sat on that morning:

pine stairs running from a pine cabin.

I was eight in January

 

and was only frozen in the face:

my boots, strewn with ice chips,

tremored like water turned electric.

 

My floe of thoughts had melted

and wrapped around the steps

 

and how, even when unpolished

and stirred with snow cut with mud,

 

those stairs still somehow looked golden,

 

at least—enough for me to want them,

along with all the other gold,

pooled from somewhere,

 

so I could use it all,

above the fleece of snow moating me,

to spring up my mansion:

the one with a jacuzzi,

 

the one they said to dream of

in kindergarten,

even when my sneakers twitched,

 

the one that, to no one’s shock,

in all the pouring, sank into my head

like a memory.