The way that skin prickles, pulling tight over bone,

after one has been left to drown in frigid waters,

Is the way I feel you,

Like fingers with blackened tips

That have caught the worst of the frostbite.

The havoc that your ice wreaks upon my flesh,

On this canvas of cells and of blood and of life and of me,

It is irrevocable.

You are the winter and I, I am a stray leaf caught in your arctic exhale.