Report from the Subtropics

For one thing, there’s no more snow to watch from an evening window, and no armfuls of logs to carry into the house so cumbersome you have to touch the latch with an elbow, and once inside, no iron stove waiting like an old woman for her early dinner of wood. No hexagrams of frost to study carefully on the cold glass pages of the bathroom. And there’s no black sweater to pull over my head while I wait for the coffee to brew. Instead, I walk around in children’s clothes— shorts and a T-shirt with the name of a band lettered on the front, announcing me to nobody. The sun never fails to arrive early and refuses to leave the party even after I go from room to room, turning out all the lights, and making a face. And the birds with those long white necks? All they do is swivel their heads to look at me as I walk past as if they all knew my password and the name of the city where I was born.