no seasons visit where we live now.
in their stead rainfall ebbs and flows like the tides.
our mother tells us:
once there was an autumn. once there was a spring.
once i was a young woman in a big city
who tossed her scarf round her throat
and crammed her hands into fleecy coat pockets
and waited in long street-vendor lines
for kestane kebap.
to eat on the ferry ride home.
she tells us of sweet nut-flesh seasoned with salt air,
of the way people warm one another in the wintertime
just by being in the same space.
we are enraptured by this story, its romance;
we want to do it too.
so she buys us chestnuts at the supermarket.
so we roast them in our oven.
when they come out,
two dozen fat, fragrant moons,
we burn our fingertips opening them up,
bring them to our mouths to suck away the pain.
how must it feel for my mother, watching?
we act out these customs like clumsy schoolchildren.
we mean well and want to do well.
we are too earnest to be believable.
the sound of hulls cracking fills the living room.
when she looks past us and out the window, she thinks:
the street is too broad and clean to be this empty.
the rain is falling on no one at all.