Sleeping In Her Car:

The red vinyl
makes a narrow bed
between the steering wheel
and plastic bags tied with twine--
this is all she has left of her life.
Trying to sleep
She curls like a child
to the bulk of a mother’s lap,
imagines the faint musk of roses
in the moist and sealed air.
Easing her breath
to a small cave of warmth
she drifts for a moment,
dreams the streetlamp
is a round eye keeping watch, an owl-like gaze,
that the moon is somehow a gift
and just this small.
She has chosen this leafless shelter
and the branches glitter with frost, a naked forest.
It is a week before Christmas.
 She dreams of other winters,
when ice was the same as fire, the first time
 the curving of his fist and the way his fingers
 traced the hollow of her throat
became the same gesture,
interchangeable as apology
and tenderness. 

-- Lisa McIvor