The sun creeps a little higher
Around the house the air is cold.
Inside they are eating eggs,
as they always do. The glass
gives back their every breath as fog. 
The floor is littered again with toys. 

Time drags. The child toys
with his food. He complains, higher-
pitched than before. The fog
fades. Outside it is too cold
to play, but the sun through the glass
says otherwise. Now the eggs

are on the floor. Now the eggs
are in heaps. Now they are toys
of greatest interest. Now the glass
is smeared with eggs, and so much higher
than before—another cold 
day. Time has passed, a fog

of days. Again like breath the fog
wipes the window, but now the eggs
are balanced on a spoon. They’re cold
before the child’s finished. The toys
find homes in shelf space, always higher.
Open handprints fog the glass,

eager. The days become like glass
and she gets glimpses through the fog:
the child’s bright eyes higher
than her waist; the steaming eggs
devoured, the old garish toys 
give way, and outside the cold

is not too fierce. Now that cold
world can be faced. A door of glass
rattles behind him. Now his toys
she does not understand. A new fog
billows up. She makes the eggs.
What else can she do? And higher

and higher; now he prepares the eggs.
She grips old days as toys in fog,
glass baubles against the cold.