2.18

----turn, we, in the night of a snapping black hoarfrost----
The rime of our skin we shake off, it crackling of sugarsweet memory. The impression I have of your hands in my sun-stripped skin sinks deeper before falling away. The trees around me groan under your weight as I stretch and shake. Their branches snap and weep; I imitate them and myself, breaking each quarter inch further toward nakedness and despair. When did this weight fall on me when I drifted among the clouds? I spent so long within you that when the chill fear lifted from me, I couldn't remember when I was so rooted to the ground. Clairvoyance and premonition fail. Memory and constitution despair. I cast my mind to earth, expecting a shatter, yet I hear only my arms flex within their icy expectation, confined, retrained to silence and composure.
The winter around me is still. The forest is silent. The last sound I heard grows to infinity, greys, retiring and modest, aged, ancient, dead. I miss the sound of your voice, and all I have is the silent fall of powdery ice, solid prison of self harm, into the snow that remains.