today, you’re Daddy’s girl grasping a single sky-colored carnation and a camera

today, you’re Daddy’s girl grasping a single sky-colored carnation and a camera,

flakes of poems collecting in your fiesty jasper hair - shuffling through drifts of memories of him, and always her, but today, especially him

and behind you, a lonely trail of one girl’s footprints even though you’re not walking alone.

silently speaking with him with the snowflakes around trees dusted with glitter and sparkling with strands of blue light. There are specks of bells ringing far away.

walking back to me, you lay down a second set of prints.

I reach out my gloved hand, take your chilly fingers in mine. You’re years away and right here, holding his hand tightly.

You fish in your pocket for a piece of this little girl - unwrap a cherry cordial, or a shard of peppermint bark and pop it whole in your mouth.

Quickly, you turn your head to glance at me and I see it: a hint of a smile from my sad girl in the snow.