The Childless Woman Goes on a Walk
It’s the kind of mid-January day that warms just enough for the snow to begin its long thaw, the icicles from rooftops dripping on your head when you walk out the door, the packed snow beneath your feet (in heavy boots) beginning to give way to that frozen dessert substance children call packing snow (good for making snowmen and balls for fights); the kind of day when young mothers bring their new babies out in strollers, bundled in caps and scarves and mittens, the babies encased in blankets, their faces, too; the kind of day with the melt and the light that it almost feels like the beginning of spring, though winter has barely begun here in a place that snows until April; the kind of day when you feel shimmery and light (ovulating, you think, the steady pulsing on the left) when anything seems possible.
Robin Silbergleid is the author of The Baby Book, the memoir Texas Girl, and several chapbooks, most recently In the Cubiculum Nocturnum. She teaches and directs the Creative Writing Program at Michigan State University.
