Blinding chilling whiteness
like the frozen crusts of Chesapeake snow-topped ice
finds a tingling way to fingertips
and through soft-linked spidery veins
to the repetitious churning heart
pounding with its last breaths
against the enveloping freeze.

Mine are the ice-capped river tears
casting pearl-eyed drops to some world's cesspool of sorrow
to melt within its fevered waves
and blend with others' broken hearts
searching for tomorrow's sunrise
in a sky whose blackness smothers stars.

Yours was the warm-fleshed hand
with dogwood blossom laid in pulse-warmed flesh
seeking out my icy soul
breathing tears to dripping life
filling strings with hope-filled chords
while shadows tumbled at your feet.

After nightfall here I lie
one solitary candle marking out the dark
within the corners of my past
within my shamed and crumpled heart.

Yours will be the callous laughs
when crying eyes have sought your face
unshielded from past mocking words,
derisive looks, and brutal pains
as yet still screened by slender threads of eyelash
that curtain off the windows to my soul.

Sheltered failures rise to stand
silhouettes against the sunset fading red
until the greyish challenge of the dark
beats out a last-loved innocent breath
as once-syllabic shrieks forget to mutter in the sighing wind
that is my heart, my drum, my song.

Dying dreams in rotting melting pots of stew
curl within a timid shattered heart
waiting as the sand-tides ebb in ice
to leap with leech-filled grinning mouths
upon a tainted half-forgotten life
and sweep the darker passions from my fragment of a soul
into the blinded empty night.