Nickel Knoll Park. 10:23 AM. A girl is centered

in the arc of a stone brick wall,

with a yellow no sledding sign.

In snow boots, pools of slush, on a repurposed hill

she intertwines fingers with her three friends

linking their two sleds into one,

tumbling down the white incline checkered with green and brown,

smoothing out the chain of snow boot indentations

The lime green saucer flips out from underneath the two boys

catapulting them on top of the two girls,

now strewn in a heap.

The overturned saucer molds snow into a mound,

Below the partial hexagon of the narrowly missed

corroded baseball fence: a fermata

The girl untangles her clammy, bare hand to

penetrate the icy crust of two day old snow.

She begins to retrieve her no-longer-waterproof glove

from underneath her best friend’s leg,

but is interrupted by a catapulting snowball.

Here in the pile, she’s held in the fermata of

laughter till she can’t breathe,

singing till she can’t talk,

her best friend is finally here,

home,

it’s been ages since she moved to Florida in 7th grade,

ages since the one person who understands her is here.

In one moment, everything is restored.

Her fingers start to freeze, but

she isn’t putting her glove back on just yet,

Fermatas don’t last forever,

but they come every once in a while.

On a day like this.

10:23 AM. Her snow boots

soaking up pools of slush, next to

a yellow no sledding sign.

Four friends

centered on the the top of

Nickel Knoll’s repurposed hill