winter

Winter
that year
was as cold
as the
summer
was unbearable.
The chimney was
blocked and the pipes
were frozen. The
heating wasn’t
cooperating.
I remember
you levering open
the front door, pushing
against the snow. You tromped
to the bins, shining
your torch over
the white
blanket
of earth.
No one came,
of course, to collect
the rubbish. But when you
limped back inside, I remember the
scrape of your eyelashes as
they flapped against my
my too-dry skin
when you
pressed
against me,
massaging my hands,
attempting to steal the
warmth from my numb fingers.
Do you remember how we huddled
together in front of the oven door,
wrapped in a rug turned duvet,
telling each other stories of
campfires past, radiators now
and summers ahead.
The cold
continued
to creep
through our bodies,
spreading its blueness like
a bruise. You decided coldness
tasted the same as aluminium foil
crushed between one’s back teeth;
after several hours of
chattering, I found
that I
agreed.
As time
passed, we found
that words began to
fail us. Sound only startled.
Words lost their meaning.
We held our
eyes closed.
Waiting
was the
only sensible course.
It was definitively cold.
we were living
in the
fringe
of December.