arms around you
like a sack of flour

curled up
     so delicate

I started
buttoning
my clothes,
hugging them
as though
cold.

the face of today is tired, tiring
to look at like aged and crinkled
paper, just
waiting to be
burned.

the cold inside my nose,
inside my eyes, inside my
hope globes and my curled
toes.

no heavy lifting or light
shifting of winds, just
full-on stale and hard and

cold.

kisses small and hand-
crafted, broken-in, a feel like
worn leather gloves, slipping
over lips (they were in need
of some warmth) covering no-
thing but the bare necessities - thin, and
they are something when
I am used to
nothing.

the cold just wants to hold us -
mold us into the blowing wind, fold us down beneath our coats,
bite deep - beneath our skin, beneath our bones.

so we won't forget
how our legs might shake
and our lips might chap
and our hair might brittle
beneath winter caps.

so we won't forget
how our voices go hoarse
and our noses glow pink
and the colder we get
the more the warmth stings.

so we won't forget
any of these things.

the cold just wants to hold us - selfish, but unknowingly so.
cradle us in long arms, carefully, inside the crook
of winter's elbow.

used to think
I was a dandelion,
as you were,

my end
tied to where you
begin,

rubbing
yellow into
skin.