Spring’s first breath stirs through February winds.

Her quick tongue finds purchase in soft peaks and hollows,

brushing skin grown sweet from cooling sweat and  

lingering traces of sunlight.

Where she presses, she stirs up fires banked down by the cold.

Embers shift, sparks fly

to greet the night now filled with the cinders of January festivals,

those long nights where the bare hearth wouldn’t warm you and

an empty bed was all that would take you in from the cold.

It was safe as long as the ashes lay thick upon the coals.

But now the painful longing rises once more, an ache of bones

and ligaments stretching in ungainly growth.

Though you would turn your face away

it is too late, her breath too quick.

Your skin will pebble;

desire will thrum its presence in blood

quickened to the pace of the ice flow cracking along the river.