Lions Gate Hospital is across the street, Jan. 2022

Meghan Kemp-Gee

Six months after the heat wave there are three
unprecedented winter storms. After
the strangeness, the snaps, the deepest snowfall,

the morning traffic’s body prone, pinned down
struggling to breathe, two cats watch salted

sidestreets from the eighth floor. The stuffed sky stills
and stuns us like so much heat. Their eyes grow
wide. Their four hunched shoulders heave, twitch-lipped teeth

chirping at something real or not. Like they
see some feathered not-nothing we can’t see.

What do you know that I don’t? Like there were
birds out there, small bodies like birds just out
of sight, like there were ghosts out in the snow.

Meghan Kemp-Gee

is the author of The Animal in the Room (Coach House Books, 2023), as well as three poetry chapbooks, What I Meant to Ask, Things to Buy in New Brunswick, and More. She also co-created the webcomic Contested Strip, recently adapted into a graphic novel, One More Year. She is a PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick and currently resides in North Vancouver, British Columbia.