My Cardboard Balcony

Like Icicles by Belinda Roddie Like icicles, your breath descends in spikes and rises into towers in the cold room that we both are settled in. Your eyes have no flame as they gaze at me. We hold hands, but our skin does not generate heat. The windows are all frosted over, as the winter "wonderland" outside deceives - it is, instead, a merciless and vast realm of lifelessness. Snow has choked the hills; blizzards have reduced trees to sad, slumped renditions of themselves. The morning chills have turned the grass to pale, blue soggy lumps that don't even shine. I pull you toward me, but I cannot warm you. We both will freeze.

Sometimes, we went out. And sometimes, we poured out our thoughts over the occasional drink, spilled our guts like lime juice squeezed into a Moscow Mule, reminisced on what we pretended were better times. Sometimes, we walked until we couldn't see the street lights anymore, and it got so dark that you couldn't see your hands in front of you unless the moon was out. And we would listen to the tide. That cold, swampy tide, etching its love letters in calligraphy on the seaweed-strewn shore.