The Winter Haunts

This is how we live our lives
fitting in errands between
snowfalls: Wednesday morning,
Friday night, Saturday night
again.

The weatherman
on the radio in the car said
it was the snowiest February
ever, said it snowed
more days than it didn't.
And I'm sick

of pounding my sneakers
into the conveyor belt,
movement going nowhere,
watching myself
past, present, and future

through a dirty gym mirror
as I log mile after mile,
sweat bead after bead,
in search of a spring

that--as it snows
for the fourth time this month,
which is now March--
isn't coming.

Where will the water go
when it decides to melt?
The bridges are only
so high above the river.
How will we run our errands then?

Stephanie Schultz lives in St. Paul, MN. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University in 2014 and has most recently been published in Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California. She has run two full marathons, six half marathons, and more 5Ks than she can remember. She is a marketing director by day, a clothing reseller by afternoon, a soccer player by evening, and a poet by night.