I’d never known what it truly felt like to be cold
until I met her.

Her eyes are an Alaskan skyline,
dark, dull, and bitter,
rising like scars after a laceration,
then blending back into the hollow of her head.

The breath which accompanies her whispers
is chill condensation evaporating off a window pane
in the early morning, just as the sun begins to rise.

They say the rule in poetry is to never write a cliché,
but as much as I’ve tried to avoid this line, I simply cannot:
Her heart is ice.
There is no other way to put it for it is nothing more and nothing less.
Frozen and insecure,
premature and jagged,
she refuses to turn the defrost setting on.

I hadn’t written since I met her;
I didn’t think I needed to for I though she was a poem in herself.
Only now I’ve realized she isn’t,
for a poem is permanent,
once you write the words down they remain with you forever;
no wind or storm or rain can carry them away.
I’m hoping that by writing her into this poem I can hold onto her the same,
but one can only hold onto ice for so long
before their hands go numb.

She is not a poem;
she is an Ice Age,
and I cannot sit around forever
waiting for her to unfreeze herself.

So I’ll sit here and hold myself back,
as the cool current wisps the Alaskan-eyed rose away,
leaving nothing behind but the only thing she gave to me:
this cold, useless poem.

I just wish the Ice Age would end,
so I can come out of hibernation.