In a memory that confuses me, 
I’m tracing ripples 
on the surface of a river with my bare, 
bewildered hands, until my palms are mottled under 
water that was recently hushed with ice—that’s how I know

it’s unreliable, this memory of reddened fingers in a river 
I only visited in August, twice—dates I kept because
meanwhile I was turning eight, or I was turning nine,
or six, or seven—underneath a high, hostile sun
as cicadas whirred a frantic reprise of their same

redundant song. But I remember with peculiar clarity
how long I left my hands inside the water to slowly
solidify, until the snow had soaked my knees
where I was pressing them against the ground. I know,

I know—there wasn’t any snow, it wasn’t winter.
There was brightness and a low, suspended heat,
and later I watched moths skip dizzy circles in the light.
It was a summer afternoon; I wasn’t frozen. Except

I still recall the way the water seemed to hunger
for each inch of heat inside my body, how it made
my muscles dull and silent. Even now I swear
I watched my father, who is not a gentle man,

softly offering the oxygen from his own breath
to start a fire from a tiny crowd of sticks he grew 
and grew until it became large enough to warm me.