The outside is well,

with tiny hairs hooked to every breath,

growing crystalline, a spider’s cradle,

swabbed with angles, blue, precise,

and surrounding, growing sharper,

moving forward; the hurt is ice.

 

The date is helpless, unabsorbed,

and the pause is thoughtless,

the places gnawed, between the faces

and rewards, of one of the faces

being yours.

But the space is what lest report,

a growing forward, where steps are ice.

 

The constant, the pulse, in a stain of white -

a swan, a mirror’s heart,

walks, with liquid rippling shoes,

aging where it was told to smooth,

with lacy will, the treadmill white,

 

and it felt like a long winter,

that first step from you.