What’s even better than ice skating is getting warm afterwards.
Your first steps on the mats are
stabby and awkward, like a toddler’s,
and you stagger to your locker, get rid of your mittens,
take your skates off, go in just your socks.
The place where people rent their skates is packed with laughter.
Flushed faces everywhere. The paper plate can
barely hold the slice of pizza your father bought you.
Foldable, doughy, oily, warm: the texture of comfort.
The mozzarella stretches and gently gives way
like everything else when you’re seven years old.
You have a little time to get back on the ice, but this side of the barrier
is almost better, sitting on the bleachers,
eating your pizza, talking to your father about something or other.
No one could ever get tired of this.
The families skate around and around
for no apparent reason, like a shoal of minnows.
Your first steps on the mats are
stabby and awkward, like a toddler’s,
and you stagger to your locker, get rid of your mittens,
take your skates off, go in just your socks.
The place where people rent their skates is packed with laughter.
Flushed faces everywhere. The paper plate can
barely hold the slice of pizza your father bought you.
Foldable, doughy, oily, warm: the texture of comfort.
The mozzarella stretches and gently gives way
like everything else when you’re seven years old.
You have a little time to get back on the ice, but this side of the barrier
is almost better, sitting on the bleachers,
eating your pizza, talking to your father about something or other.
No one could ever get tired of this.
The families skate around and around
for no apparent reason, like a shoal of minnows.
