My subject is silent assent, and my thesis states that winter is mostly night for a reason. Behold the numbed mind, its unquestioning patience. A condition of the lockdown is that we can’t open our eyes. I hear bells across the city diminish and in this way know time. When the streets reopen, we hold a vigil in remembrance of all the other vigils we have held. Into history escapes the once unthinkable. Snow obscures roofs, sidewalks.

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Elizabeth Onusko is the author of Portrait of the Future with Trapdoor (Red Paint Hill, 2016). Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Bennington Review, Best New Poets 2015, Conduit, DIAGRAM, Sixth Finch, Fugue, Southern Humanities Review, and Redivider, among others. She is the editor of Foundry and assistant editor of inter|rupture. Her website is elizabethonusko.com.