Mistee St. Clair

And What Are We Now

Because I don't understand titles. What to call a thing. 
Like us—what do we call ourselves? If I were to name us 
married, what, if anything, does that mean? Is it accurate, 
as true as, well, is anything truer than how we identify it, 
which is to say what we imagine or expose? 
The story is always too short. How once it was gentle, 
and good enough, we thought. Once it was kindness 
and now. How the kindnesses become reminders, 
declarations. Like how snow comes with a soft knock, 
or the first frost creeps in, in only a night, feathering 
the inside corners of the window. Vapor like dew 
collecting into droplets, cooling, then icing—
which is to say shatterable, thawable. 
Each dark morning now a black wing, flaring.

Mistee St. Clair is a Rasmuson Foundation and Alaska Literary Award grantee and has been published by The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Common, Northwest Review, SWWIM Every Day, and more. Born and raised in Alaska, she lives in Lingít Aaní (Juneau), where she hikes, writes, and wanders the mossy rainforest. Her next collection, Reconciliations, will be published by Empty Bowl Press in 2026.