Snow

I see the cat walking toward me in the dream,
its paws marking the snow. In a second, it’s a white cat,

in another second it’s black; it says my name, twice.
Awake, Lucia calls my name.

There is a sun inside her voice.
Outside the window, the world is white,

a prairie of snow. Black birds hover around the snow,
as if blessing it, before perching.

It falls harder, as we look. It falls with the silence
of saints. On that whiteness, I see footprints.

Down the street, a man is walking his dog.
This is magical, Lucia mutters. It is.

In that second, I count my breaths. Unsure why.
In that second, I can hear my heart—a cat purring.

The rabbi says there must exist a name for the cat
that strolls into my dreams, that purrs in the cave of my heart.

All that snow, all that whiteness. There must be a name
for the moons splashed all over the earth like that.

While the cat skitters beneath my heart,
Lucia says something. Her eyes lost.

The snow looks into her eyes.
The psalm inside my ribs echoes, echoes.

Lucia stands there by the window, silent.
Silent as the snow on my thirst.

Silent as the tiny flurry that lands on the windowsill.
I’m trying to understand the divine.

The snow, its flurries, is God shaving Their hair.
Perhaps this is magic. Maybe it’s my lover, Lucia,

standing by the window, groped by the whiteness of the world.
Her eyes a warm softness. In them, a white garden,

and two black birds hopping, stamping their prints in the snow.
The weather app says it’ll be sunny in two days.

I don’t know if the cat will be here then.
I don’t know if the snow will be here then.
I don’t know if Lucia will be here then.

I don’t know if the black birds will be here then.
Or if they’d have flown into a strange land
where a child, seeing them for the first time, would point

to his mother. Mama, look, two beautiful black birds!
Maybe it will be snowing by which

her partner would join them at the window, place a kiss on their wife,
and lift their child into their arms.