Kelsey Griffin Poet Prose Poetry

The Snowman

I stand in the doorway of his heart, holding a blueprint he cannot read. I ask for a shelter, a fire, a soft place to land, but he offers me only the framing— strong, upright, and terrifyingly bare.

He loves me in the only language he was taught: the dialect of survival, the grammar of silence. He fixes the leaking tap, he checks the locks, he brings his body to the bed like a shield. But when I ask to be held, really held, not just contained but cherished, I see the panic rise behind his eyes— a deer startled by a warmth it does not understand.

I know the story of his making. I know he grew up in a house where "I love you" was a currency so rare it caused inflation, where needs were noise, and feelings were flaws. He learned to metabolize neglect into armor, starving the boy to feed the man, until his chest became a vault where nothing gets out, and nothing gets in.

But I am starving, too. I am a gardener trying to coax orchids from soil that has known only drought. I water him with patience, with pleading, with tears, waiting for the ground to soften, waiting for him to realize that the war is over, that he does not have to ration his touch anymore.

I want to be loved correctly. Not just kept safe, but known. I want him to look at me and not see a task to be completed, but a question he actually wants to ask. I want him to break the mirror of his childhood and step through the glass, bleeding if he must, to find me on the other side.

I love the boy he was, the one who froze to stay alive. But I need the man he is to finally, finally thaw.

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