Everything lidded with cold, the old man
breathing his last winter. The child
made an airplane out of chairs
and I climbed in. My seatbelt a padded
stick from another game, laid across my lap. 
The orange marker, a lever: we banked 
and turned and there were clouds 
on the rug underneath us.  
I see the bridge, I said. 
We’re getting close, she said.
We flew to Winnipeg 
and made a fire on the rug there.
The rocks became potatoes
and we checked them again and again.
Too sour, she said, and I agreed.
They needed more time in the fire.
Outside the streets glazed with ice.
Outside outside, the grandfather,
dying. We played hard. She chipped
at fossils under the sofa’s cushions.
She blew them off, the small dust of time
disappearing, the ancient imagined
held out in her hand.