Darling, my dear. I hold your hands and they’re freezing. Your every breath a plume of white mist, curling like smoke in the summer nights. I make you hot cocoa and you hold the cup, letting the warmth kiss your fingers. I like it, you say, and watch the ice spreading from under your palms.
I sleep all bundled up in your arms, wearing scarves and gloves and a thick winter coat. You let me sleep on your chest and it’s freezing, makes me shiver, my teeth clicking shut on every shaky inhale. We move apart a little bit, enough for me to pull up another blanket as a shield against the cold, your cold.
You kiss me, radiator buzzing in the background, and when you lean back my lips are blue, my face numb. I smile and you laugh, lingering just out of reach. You’ll freeze, you sigh. If I kiss you again, you’ll freeze.
You get close enough to adjust my scarf, have it cover my nose, and then you lean back again. Smile. And you look blue, in the way where I know you’ll crash on the couch tonight, drunk and babbling about feeling warm, alive, burning. You’re full of ice and right now you’re like melting, snow in you thawing, puddles of water gathering at your feet. The water ruins the pillows, the bedding, the floor.
Come morning you’ll mop it up. It’ll be quiet save for the crunch of snow under my boots. Our living room a beautiful, glistening landscape of regret. I’ll offer to help, make you a cup of tea, offer again. You’ll smile, look up with a wink. Nah, you’ll say. I’m good.
Make you another cup? I’ll ask. You’ll blow me a kiss, tell me you love me and yes, please, take my cup. When you’re done we’ll gather in the kitchen and hold hands, curled up by the window.
I get myself a blanket and you let me wrap it around myself, settling between your legs, leaning back against your chest. You hold me like that, until I fall asleep and dream of blizzards and candles and wading through snow that burns, burns at the touch.
Frostbite gets us, in the end. We live through it, like we’ve always done.
