Winter heart

maybe it's the weather. maybe it's the steam in the morning and the fog in my lungs that brings these words to life. i can feel them stirring under my breath like a second life; i can taste them in the december air that teases nostalgia from the pitter patter of my winter heart.

it's like life is a faded photograph. its like time is a frozen lake. it's like i'm sitting on porches wearing oversized sweaters and holding cups that burn the tips of my numb fingertips. it's like i'm in a forest and it's damp. it's dark. it tastes like a memory and the rain looks the way it did two years ago when i was broken. it's like remembering something perfect in a moment that was anything but; like holding something just out of reach in the palm of my hand.

ten months and three days ago: i'm in a coffee shop with frost on the sidewalk. it is quiet and loud and i have the feeling that i really am all alone. but it isn't bad. it is peaceful. it is soft and my bruised heart breathes deep. i exhale. it is the knowledge of being surrounded and the noise being a cocoon. busy lives and i am still. i am a rock in the river and it is cold. my hands are tingling from the frostbitten air, but i am happy.

it feels like that. it feels like my soul is stirring hot under the frozen water - like now that the sun has set, i can stand the heat of my words. they cry and yelp as they rise from their dust-covered graves. they shake the coming snow from their shoulders and leap through the fog. it feels like that - liking coming home to the cold and letting the winter slip its arms around me. it feels like summer is gone and the cold has burned the edge off of july pain. like the cold had reanimated my still heart, my marble fingers; like the fog has softened my marble fingers, my granite tongue.

(like summer has faded and my silence finally can too.)