Jona Colson

Winter Hydrangeas

Everyone will be out

of the house. We can make

believe. Flowers and snow,

comfort and paisley print

to help us remember

that these days are almost real

and there is still a bloom

burning like winter hydrangeas.

I’ll be the girl,

clothespins for nails,

my sister’s prom dress,

my mother’s shoes.

Navigating the stairs

with precision and care

to make the ice-break

noise of comfort on the kitchen floor.

Jona Colson’s poetry collection, Said Through Glass, won the 2018 Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. He is also the co-editor of This Is What America Looks Like: Poetry and Fiction from D.C., Maryland, and Virginia (2021). His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. His translations and interviews can be found in Prairie Schooner, Tupelo Quarterly, and The Writer’s Chronicle. He has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He is a professor of ESL at Montgomery College in Maryland and lives in Washington, DC. In 2022, he became co-president with Caroline Bock of the Washington Writer’s Publishing House and edits the bi-weekly journal, WWPH Writes.