It's Still Life

3 Vivaldi’s Winter — L’Inverno (1st Movement)

Prologue for the Deaf Listener:
This project (multi-part) is written with the deaf reader in mind. It translates orchestral movement into embodied language. These words are the sound of cold becoming a lash. Bring on the wind with teeth of glass, biting bare branches into prayers of splinter.

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3 Vivaldi’s L’Inverno — (Winter) Inside Something Smaller

Shock wears off.
Now the accounting.

Inhale.
The air, a knife.
Exhale.
A ghost on glass.

Fingers curl.
Not a fist.
A cage for the last spark.

Ribs ache,
the work of bellows.
Lungs burn,
trading frost for fire.

Heart,
that stubborn fist,
pounding the door.

I am here.
I am here.
I am here.

This is not a hearth.
It is a calculation.
A minimum prayer.

Let this breath
lead to another.

The storm is out there.
In here, it is only this:
the slow, terrible math
of feeling.