frost

You know what brings out the worst in me? You. You bring out the worst in me. With your practicalities and pride and assumptions, taking actions for granted and feelings as nonexistent. The past is never an object to you, only the future. Because it's untouchable and unmuddled. I know it.

And ill timing. ILL TIMING. Multiplies it over and makes the room freeze, one particle at a time, at once tangible and sparse like fairy dust in beloved children's tales, soon crystallizing into ice sheets between you and me and him and her, except in places where figures blur and bleed into each other. Through the silvery white film, I can't tell.

The freeze creeps over and once again I am the girl under the blue and orange covers. Nineteen and nine, if there was a difference in the decade past, at the moment I am blind to it. Tracing my hand's silhouette against the brightly colored stripes, I am caught again in exhausted words and wasted silence.

The cold comes toward me and I can't figure out whether the ice is getting thicker or thinner, but I know the faint orange glow between us is not enough.

It never is.

**