No one dares to speak of winter,
But she’s freezing.
Chattering against each other,
Her teeth will spill the secret
Of your frigid temperatures,
Your distance – so close, yet so cold.

Without a purpose, with no real excuse,
She opens her quivering mouth,
And frivolity is pouring out.
“Don’t listen.” But you do.
She loses sense in feet, in inches –
In her proximity to you,
And she just can’t keep her distance.

Sitting in the middle of frozen deserts
(barren but full of your ice),
She watches the mercury fall
And wants to catch it on her tongue
Like poisonous snowflakes,
Dangerous but purely appealing.
(She always thought that pain
could be measured in degrees.)

She claims she’s giving you up.
“You never saw me;
You only saw through me.”
Still she feels someone staring
At the curve of her back,
But because she can look only ahead,
She refuses to turn around.

She needs to make some progress,
But you’ve frozen her in place.
Accomplishment begins at the extent,
The very limits of your reach,
But she can never measure up to you.
So she just holds the thermometer in her hands
And watches the mercury fall.