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"Snowdrops" by Louise Gluck | when you do not expect to survive — chris erdman

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Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know what despair is; then winter should have meaning for you. I did not expect to survive, earth suppressing me. I didn't expect to waken again, to feel in damp earth my body able to respond again, remembering after so long how to open again in t

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know what despair is; then winter should have meaning for you. I did not expect to survive, earth suppressing me. I didn't expect to waken again, to feel in damp earth my body able to respond again, remembering after so long how to open again in the cold light of earliest spring— afraid, yes, but among you again crying yes risk joy in the raw wind of the new world. In Snowdrops, Gluck turns to the metaphor of winter to express the state of emotional pain that feels nearly physical, that ends up inhabiting our bodies. Pain is bone-cold.…

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