Some Say in Ice

Icy cold fingers grab my neck,
Like my son riding piggy-back and choking my breath.
Each winter the cold comes and stays.
And each winter I forget.
Too close to Erie’s shore: an ice-breathing dragon always ready for battle.
Most days my car door freezes shut and I must curse it open,
throw hot water at the locks, a barely-armed attempt against winter’s wrath.

And today the cold seeps in and will not leave.
No matter tea and blanket and slippers and heat turned up beyond what I can afford.
The chill won’t leave my too-white fingers where circulation slows
And my plodding blood crawls slowly through my veins.

It’s the knife I think of.
Steel scalpel sharp and ice against her skin.
And I cannot shake the red of her dreams on the table
And the way my own blood turns to ice.

We are both pierced today, though glistening blade and
Shuttered heart are not the same.
The cold will deal with both at once,
And the snow will cover that which we will not see.

How long the forgetting will be with this,
How long the battle to slay such foe?
But only that spring and thaw must follow.
And someday Erie’s wind will breathe warmth again.

But it’s the knife I think of on that steel table.
Curses and hot water no match for this,
Carving with the frost of an ice sculptor and
The delicacy of blood’s most tiny vein.
And only now the cold.