In a winter reflection, through a cage of ice,
I watch a shadow of myself love you.
From a sunken place, I’m stuck,
Endlessly pacing within my head,
I’m stuck, a lonely, hungry tiger.
The coldness fills me slowly
as I watch you from my prison.
The bars to my cage pretend to bend,
but it is only a trick of the sun.
I refuse to leave the cage
even though I have the key,
for safety
for sanity
for selfishness
I swallow the key often.
The cage will melt eventually
so I will wait until then,
It is hard to hate for so long
in conditions like this
where every day the water freezes
and unfreezes and freezes.
It is hard to hate when her hands melt the ice.
Love freezes the pain and drips away everything else
Into the gutter, but the sun always falls, still.