Mary Ruefle

Love Story

The one winter I spent by water I would walk out on the ice every evening at dusk after the ice fishermen had abandoned their shanty. I would peer into the window of stapled plastic and watch the stick of frozen butter as it lay there on a plywood counter. I don't know what the butter was for. I knew they built fires on the ice for warmth and drank out of bottles for warmth, but butter in the shanty? I never saw them actually cook, usually they would take the fish home, home not being the shanty, the shanty being a temporary winter dwelling where they could store their gear and stuff. The sun would set. throwing a glare on the ice, and sometimes I saw through the window that it cast a glare on that stick of butter. I went back every day to check on the butter. It was never unwrapped, it was never cut. And then spring came, overnight the shanty sank on a doily of slush and the butter went with it. I never asked, I never found out, but as the days grew warmer, warm enough to melt butter over an afternoon, I often thought to myself that it was the perfect love story, and I was glad the butter had disappeared overnight and not stuck around to melt.

Mary Ruefle is an American poet, essayist, and professor. Her recent volumes, all from Wave Books, include Dunce, My Private Property, and Madness, Rack, and Honey, the latter a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. She is the poet laureate of the state of Vermont.