SUICIDE DAY

by Brianna Ballard

The sixteenth of March
is always wet,
not the snowed-in kind
that calls for a fireplace
or Disney movies and tea.
This wetness leaks.
Icicles cling
to the car mirror’s edge;
The slushed brownness is a cloak
on the sidewalks downtown; the smell,
damp wood and smoke,
comes from other people’s chimneys.
But when the trees get their buds,
the branches gain more potential
as a display for a tire swing
than for a twine necklace.
Salt coats the roads
in a crumbling of gray
but won’t sting
dogs’ paws, or your hands;
you could’ve remembered
that a winter’s day suicide
isn’t poetic at all.