Celia Bland
The Fox Fur Hat

I found in a market stall in a windy square under the turbaned domes of the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. On a cold morning and a sharp wind. The sun pale old pee, a hard decision at a touristy venue ragged with plastic parachutes of poop and pop bottles ice-hard in April as any decision made with a trigger squeeze. To wear the fox hat I bristled with a warmth that outlasted animal, auburn as my own before it went white with care. Its color persists in a cowlick puffing from nape of neck at a birthmark my children also carry into waters far from the Neva, marked by a fox’s spilled blood.