How vividly the memory of your lips Struck me in that cave of ice As if one of those stalactites, Frozen in perpetual motion, Had thawed just enough to crack and fall Directly down. It didn't need to fall though, it's fall was implicit And as you held me there, pressing my back To where the ice met the stone I realized That's where we were, too- Trapped in the ambiguity of permanence meeting Utmost transience.
The waterfall melted around us And each second we spent In the starkly unstable cave hidden behind it Was a risk then uncalculated. With the eruption Cascading in the quietest places of memory We willed the thaw, really, Begging 'let it drown us; Let all the ice melt and let it Pull us under and from to river To our corpse floating through the ocean, Let it pull All away From the stone.'