You - arising from the snowbound stream like a willow, encased in taut winter skin. This other skin frozen into an arctic gown or a shroud floating over pink naked flesh.
Opening your mouth through wreathes of breath, screaming: “HOOOOOOOOOYAH!” Ice-slicked, crystallized curls thrown back sauna-birthed out of December’s gestation your steaming newborn self.
You -- plunging into water so cold could not, at first, separate bones and blood from its’ zeroed embrace. Heart pausing, tremulous, uncertain—hot human magma coagulating in its cage of stunned ribs, flash-frozen, turned again into frigid fire.
You -- slim, white sword unsheathed being tempered through glacial baptism, leaden chill creeping mercury that heart and blood so easily become.
You -- vaulting up through frigid scrims of ice, screaming your silver breath, the last heat human furnace and bellows release.
