February 8, 2022

breaking the ice

In the photograph, a woman is leaning out an upstairs window, her fist around
the handle of a dustpan, her torso flat against the sill. She is breaking the ice
on the deck roof, chipping at the edges of a block wedged there after weeks
of frigid weather. Today it’s warm enough for a light jacket and no gloves, and as
she works she watches a clear stalactite descending a few feet away and wonders about
the day it will loosen from the slate tiles and come crashing. Soon, the dustpan stops
being useful and her body isn’t long enough to reach and the ice, at its center, is too heavy
to break. So the woman squeezes herself back through the window, goes downstairs
to make a cup of tea. Sometimes, she wants to be someone with the muscle to clear
anything in her way, to clear it all. But the ice can only be ice.