Winter in June by Lorette C. Luzajic

He is talking about glaciers and the widest skies in the world, about a place called Gondwana that hasn’t existed for two hundred million years. In June, the deep of winter, the moon is eternal and the sun does not rise. You imagine night horses with ice in their manes, galloping across snow-capped mountains. Where would you be if you weren’t here? Maybe there, a little farther north, where Malbec flows from the limestone and men like this one dance the tango. You were too practical to run after him when you had the chance, didn’t try to tame him into staying. You chose to set down roots, in the Northern hemisphere where the cold comes in January, without looking back. Found a man you can depend on, who still makes your heart race to this day, and you are happy. Still, as glasses clink and voices murmur, as guests choose carefully between Viognier and Pinot Noir, or Stilton and Gruyere, as your small audience takes in an arrangement of your pictures, you feel a strange sensation of thaw. It has been a few years since your southbound friend has made it home to one of your exhibitions; it has been nearly twenty since you slept together. Patrons are asking questions about your palette, about the meaning of the signs in your impasto. But you are somewhere else, just for the moment, in the crispy porch frost of a November dusk, melting, Coldplay on repeat, tumbling atop those so small hips, crushing them like winter birds.

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