This season of the lantern

feels like bone against bone, scapula,
an undertow of home. I scrape
frost from the walls of my mouth.
I name each howl after
a nearby mountain, then strip it
from memory. How cold the night
feels when you realize he is hollow,
when you press your face against
a softness which doesn't give. I have
yet to forgive how you left me, a forest
of cracked boughs—riven, splinter,
snap. Snow collects on my shoulders
and I shout until my voice stirs
the owls and blade-brisk air, until
I loosen your name from the white
-packed boulders, until
a quiet avalanche appears.

Caitlin Scarano is a writer based in Washington. Her second full length collection of poems, The Necessity of Wildfire, was selected by Ada Limón as the winner of the Wren Poetry Prize, won a 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Award, and was a finalist for the WA State Book Award. Find her at caitlinscarano.com

Crystal Ignatowski's poems have appeared in Barren Magazine, Four Way Review, Glass, and more. She lives and writes in Oregon.