i ventured
to think that i could
 go on cold walks
with sad-eyed boys
 with boys who harbor
sadnesses
perhaps more wide
than my own.
i thought that i could
 go on winterwalks
 with coldboys who
take sleeping-pills
 to stay aligned
with their hearts,
but it only
brought me further
to the inevitability
of myself, of winter.

and instead of thinking
 of the beauty and the silence
 of the stars,
and the brilliance that was the moon,

i felt a part of an
 Andrew Wyeth painting
i felt
the cold and the silence
penetrating into
the
cold and the silence
of me.

people don't understand silence,
so i fill my silence with words.

and so i mentioned it
to the coldfaced boy
who watched me walking
in the middle of the road
hopping from
one yellow line
to the next.
he hadn't heard of Andrew Wyeth.

and i thought about the
 naked trees slinking
 against the wintersky,
 shaking and still
with the wiles of
winter's harness
which are never wiles
 at all
but instead are
silence, death, and barely at all
anything
penetrable
like
wind or boys
with tangible sadnesses
or boys
 with intangible sadnesses.
and are instead
like
Andrew Wyeth.

Emily K. Miller
Solanco High School
Quarreyville, PA
Mr. William Lewis