I touch the tip of my tongue
and taste the frigid air.
White winter snowflakes
fly around my ears.
Winter boots crackle
the cackling ice.
I think twice
about running, but I do anyway.
My legs are stiff boards
of wood, slipping
on icy blue sheets.
I could fall through at any moment.
Is it wrong to taste snowflakes,
let them melt on my tongue?
Is it wrong to lift my foot
and shatter the ice,
make shivering shards scatter
and expose the ancient cold
beneath my feet?
Is it wrong
to taste, to stretch out and take
a girl by the hand and
twirl her, swirl her,
make her believe she can fly?
When we were children,
we patted our mittens,
hardening balls of snow and gravel;
extra points if you hit the head.
Snow in my ear;
I can hear winter calling,
her voice sweet as syrup.
Sometimes I shiver in the middle of summer
and I wonder
if it’s wrong to feel her touch
when the sun shines?
Does heat warm the heart
or melt it?
White fluff clings to
evergreens,
pines and sap covered in frost.
I was the summer child,
a pocket of heat,
my mother said so,
but I was born in winter,
crying, screaming, calling,
my rosy nose tiny and red,
my fingers closed in neat fists,
already squeezing the icicles,
the etched designs in my palms,
each new snowflake a unique print.
I yearned for the sun, but
I was born into winter.
She delivered me with frigid hands,
held me close to her breast,
whispered, It is not wrong
to love the cold.
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash
Rachel Sandell 