#hypothermia
It’s usually said
That your fingers go numb first.
That the cold gets to your hands even through layers upon layers of thick cloth that are meant to protect it.
That you can’t tightly grab onto a lifeline when you freeze to death,
Unlike how you would in any other near-death scenario.
Next is your toes,
Your feet follow your hands, losing the feeling in them.
It’s funny, in the way that one of the first things you learn in life is to crawl and walk,
And when you’re on your knees in front of death, you lose the ability to do so.
The next to go is your ears,
They go numb too, making the world sound muffled like it’s underwater.
No hearing people screaming your name as you succumb to the cold,
Only silence in the path to the end.
Your nose goes next,
Feeling like it’s turned to ice or stone,
Smells become distantly unknown,
Only a little into freezing over.
Next are your cheeks—the rest of your face.
Red from the chill as they would in the heat
Except the cold is much more merciful in killing off your nerves before it does you.
It’s a plausible question,
Whether it hurts to smile more because your face throbs or because you’re drowning in your demise.
And then goes your chin.
It’s hard to communicate when you’re dying,
Less so to call for help,
And more so to say goodbye to everything you know.
It’s going to happen eventually,
And when it happens, you can’t guarantee you’ll be able to say goodbye,
Or even want to in the first place.
Jun 22, 2025
Jun 22, 2025 at 10:36 AM UTC
I find myself offering to the death of cold.
Your love is inhospitable.
Prolonged exposure to your love
has caused numbness in my body.
I’ve learned to handle the bitterness,
But each layer that kept me warm has been stripped.
Inside of me,
the same stinging chill is found
that your heart was frosted in.
And now I understand when the sorrow became frozen.
The icy heart hardens into a glacier
when the agony remains in a fixed spot,
forced to recrystallize.
I’ll burrow myself in the comfort of snow,
stabbing myself with ice spikes I've sharpened,
knowing the only amenity
is my death tonight.
That everything I could’ve endured,
was the frost mounting against my flesh.
Sep 5, 2024
Sep 5, 2024 at 11:20 PM UTC
I freeze two stages in
and she watches with adoration
what a catch,
in weather such as this
Nov 4, 2019
Nov 4, 2019 at 8:20 AM UTC
_snow is falling
piano playing in the background
grey skies
dead leaves litter the ground
tree limbs creaking in the wind
soaked clothes
numb
no more feelings
heart frozen
head aching
body breaking
walk out to the big oak tree
heart buried in the snow
leave it
leave it there
don't care for it
hypothermic love
i gave up a long time ago_
Nov 16, 2018
Nov 16, 2018 at 9:46 AM UTC
Check in impatiently
hauling light luggage -
downturned eyes,
bundled fifties,
skull packed with sickly
sugarplum notions
Stiff key-card door and
three hanger closet -
leave your mittens, jacket,
and conscience dangling
Towels
cotton-knit sandpaper
no softer than well-trafficked
threadbare tawny-port carpet and
your hands and feet pretend
not to feel it
nervously,
a bit numbly,
you notice her standing
with glacial stillness
moments away from
the foot of the bed
Two crooked lampshades and
dim headboard lights
close their eyes when
the mattress springs
first compress,
the air tingling
with dustbunny snowflakes
This room is too dark now,
something like snowblind,
but you don't really want to see
do you?
Frostbite when she touches you
and somehow this bed
is more welcoming
than your own
you'll remember her
february fingertips
and hailstone hair,
a sensation of northerly winds
strange how heavy the comforter feels
sprawled across your skin
you envision an ice slab,
see it suffocate
a slow-flowing river,
and your breath quickens
if only because your lungs
have been crushed
then, just before hypothermia,
she leaves,
lights off,
wallet lighter,
you stay whiteknuckled, lightheaded,
half-consumed by a snowdrift,
beneath the duvet -
dazed
your tongue sits confused,
having asked for peppermints
and been given ice cubes instead
and when you finally rise,
and thaw your limbs
and try not the slip
on the black ice
she always leaves
by the door,
Try to forget
you paid
hourly rates
and shed your clothes
that you might find warmpth
in a blizzard
Feb 7, 2018
Feb 7, 2018 at 6:29 PM UTC
I’m small enough to cry for those with frozen teardrops
who can’t get up off the side of the road to die in peace
So I'll abide in this polar freezing cold silent deliverance
where a hollow warmth hides the tears that aren't for
cryin’ alone
There’s a bitter arctic wind blows right through the tree trunks
there’s no shelter leaning on the dream of the leeward other side
This winter isolation grasps on impatient pieces of frayed light
like hope a mustard sized seed of shine may move venerable
mountain peaks
Who ever knows how long salvation lasts ? They said he died
sleeping on a cardboard comforter and blue plastic tarp duvet;
a holey old coat stained with all what went wrong in life …
And .., I feel a sickening guilt of a warming fire's thickening
smoke
The chimney’s icicles drip an angel’s frozen teardrops
But .., I can’t find no heaven in this big ol’ world ...
wild is the wind ... January 4th, 2017
Jan 4, 2017
Jan 4, 2017 at 11:10 AM UTC
You are slipping through the cracks of my
Fingers
The fingers that once held Yours
Together interwoven.
Clutched in my hands,
These Mittens
Sewn between the spaces of
Each other's palms.
We were so close,
So Warm.
It's so cold without you
The fingers are always the first
To go.
Oct 19, 2015
Oct 19, 2015 at 10:12 PM UTC
*As I walk into the cold cold river,
I start to quake and shiver
The water stabs my skin like knives
Cats have nine lives
I have only one
As I walk into the water
The bright sun
Is like a comforter
The cold seeps through my body
The birds in the distance
Chirp a sweet melody
All is lost now
This is my final bow
The cold hits my brain
I refrain
From going back
Everything goes black
This is hypothermia*
May 7, 2015
May 7, 2015 at 2:05 PM UTC
I am the God of all that is dank, dark, and cold.
My sisters are the autumn chill and the winter wind.
Touch me, turn to ice. Hold me in constant hypothermia.
I will shatter your heart and freeze your sorrow.
You can't hold a candle to me, my presence extinguishes heat.
Very few can handle my words, with a frozen mind to follow.
I am what fire is not. I am the blizzard storm.
Apr 30, 2015
Apr 30, 2015 at 9:07 PM UTC
Pull me close and
wrap me in your arms.
Keep me warm and safe
from the storm outside of us.
Throw your coat around
my icy shoulders.
Press your body against me,
share your warmth.
Take my hand in yours,
fold over my stubborn fingers.
Trace the veins in my arm.
Put your hot lips on my frozen blue ones.
Give me your breaths.
You try as if it might do something.
Push the lids over
my frozen, glassy eyes.
Then call your best friend.
You’ll need help moving my body.
Jan 22, 2015
Jan 22, 2015 at 5:04 PM UTC
Between the icy roads January brings and
how cold I am in this lonely bed,
I worry that if you crash the car,
I won't be able to tell whether it's
missing you that numbs me
or the breeze I feel when
I find myself standing over your grave.
Love comes in different ways to everyone.
Your presence warms my heart more than
anything ever has before,
and I fear that once you disappear,
so will the warmth that keeps me from freezing.
The chills I get when your fingers graze my back
are not shivers from the cold.
They're simply bliss
enveloping me in the moment
where I am certain I am only yours,
and nothing else matters.
Not the ice.
Not the snow.
Not the clouds overhead.
You're summer in my endless winter,
Eyes as green as pines,
Hair kissed by the sun,
Freckles dotting your face like bees to roses,
You're as warm as the breeze.
The ice is melting.
The snow has turned to a late spring drizzle
as a form of proof that you are not going to dissipate
or follow the weather patterns that have existed so long
here in the terrain that is my mind.
Instead, you lit a match.
The fire grew, warming the lands,
bringing life to the world I never thought I'd see again-
happiness.
You made me fall.
I am not breaking ice
and I am not succumbing to the cold,
Because you are easing me into the sea
And helping me swim.
For once,
I would not mind if the water swallowed me.
The ocean's warmer than I ever imagined,
And I wouldn't mind drowning in you.
Jan 6, 2015
Jan 6, 2015 at 12:04 AM UTC
So very cold,
All of the time.
I can't feel my hands,
But that's normal now.
I feel my bones crack,
As I try to move.
The ceaseless shivering,
Has become normal,
And ineffective.
My pale skin has a sheen of blue,
Marred by the line of red,
From my bleeding nose.
And with 3 pained breaths,
I fall to sleep,
And breath no more.
Nov 13, 2014
Nov 13, 2014 at 4:50 PM UTC
He was heartless
And cold like winter
Yet he gave her all of his heart
And all of his warmth
Oct 23, 2014
Oct 23, 2014 at 2:44 PM UTC
Holding a small, bare, baby in the palm of your hand –
small, fleshy, and lifeless –
blue spider webs beneath the cool, pale skin. . .
That’s what I had unearthed,
beneath the watery depths of my name.
We were both on the brink of hypothermia,
slowly dying in the snow by the black creek.
I found a small hollow of roots beneath a tree,
untouched by the white kiss of winter.
I rose to my booted feet, caked in mud.
I splashed, hobbled, and painfully collapsed to my knees,
my hands cupping the small babe,
as if offering what little we had left to the deaf tree,
before I undressed myself
one arm at a time,
holding the baby boy up to my bare chest
as I pulled my head beneath the collar of my shirt,
and flicked the muddy boots off my feet,
and unbuttoned with one hand my wet jeans,
till I was finally naked,
curled up around the small boy who still had a chance.
We huddled there in the ICU beneath the tree
in our small cocoon of earth, snow, and cloth;
and with every exhale, “sorry” escaped my blistered lips.
It was my fault I had found him there
alone and abandoned.
He is the part of me that I feared –
for and of –
and that I had ripped from inside myself,
leaving it stunted.
But: that cold, saddening, sobering, apologetic embrace
saved my life from being forever incomplete,
and healed the selves
that my actions to protect
had inevitably began killing.
Holding him, that small piece of me,
the mass of innocence equal to my heart,
holding him is when we became anew.
Today I cherish his fair feminine features
that once puzzled and concerned the mirrors,
and sometimes drape his strong body in dresses
crowning his mane with wild flowers
so he can twirl and play in the meadow the way he wants .
Today I hold his hand,
and carry him on my shoulders while he sleeps,
slumped, and nuzzled on my head,
as we walk through the world
like a father and son who just finished a day:
of chasing each other,
of wrestling with each other,
and of playing hide-and-go-seek for hours.
Today he shows me love and affection
like all men ought to know
like all men ought to show
and teaches me what I had forgotten about myself
all those years ago.
Oct 1, 2014
Oct 1, 2014 at 9:39 PM UTC