Just one gilded drop earring
and a single ruby mitten
sit boxed with other orphans.
And let’s not talk about
the missing stripey socks
who mock us in their secret lairs.

Do you remember The Snowy Day?
A childhood favorite
where she, like me,
wanted to save
a snowball in her coat pocket,
to clutch at something

that
is
so
un-
clutch-
able.

Some things get lost,
and others are impossible
to keep, constrain, hold
—leaving a damp spot
or watery eyes, cold fingers,
empty earlobes, many icy toes.

Tu me manques,
I say to my gone and in-treatment girl,
you are lacking from me.
I learned this French in high school,
so unlike the English
I miss you.

Elle m’a manqué,
she has left from me —
I am in withdrawal
And she is jonesing for a hit.
We hunger for each other,
we search…

I am holding a snowball in my pocket —
tu me manques, mon amour.
Tu me manques.

Ellen Skilton is a professor of education whose publications have appeared in Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Curriculum Inquiry, , The Dewdrop and Rebelle Society. She is an educational anthropologist, an applied linguist and a Fringe Fest performer. She is in the first year of an MFA Program in Creative Writing at Arcadia University. She is an excellent napper, a chocolate snob, a swimmer, and lives in Philadelphia with a dog named Zoomer, a cat named Katniss and some lovely humans.