Once Upon a Frozen Star

Oh, was it in this dark-Decembered world we walked among the moonbeam-shadowed fields and did not know ourselves for weight of snow upon our laden parkas? White as sheets, as spectral-white as ghosts, with clawlike hands thrust deep into our pockets, holding what we thought were tickets home: what did we know of anything that night? Were we deceived by moonlight making shadows of gaunt trees that loomed like fiends between us, by the songs of owls like phantoms hooting: Who? Who? Who? And if that night I looked and smiled at you a little out of tenderness . . . or kissed the wet salt from your lips, or took your hand, so cold inside your parka . . . if I wished upon a frozen star . . . that I could give you something of myself to keep you warm . . . yet something still not love . . . if I embraced the contours of your face with one stiff glove . . . How could I know the years would strip away the soft flesh from your face, that time would flay your heart of consolation, that my words would break like ice between us, till the void of words became eternal? Oh, my love, I never knew. I never knew at all, that anything so vast could curl so small. Originally published by Nisqually Delta Review