Winter Will Thaw
ANGELA CHEN
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I
Little thing under packed-down ice in a dark winter lake, where sense is a fantasy and nothing can be seen, touched, thought. Yet someday you’ll sharpen your sternum into a blade and cut into the cold fortification that has kept you so still, break from this dim dead dormancy of ancient snow-water, kelp, and dreams that have not yet been fed light. II Little thing, you can’t make something out of nothing. How many times should you die before you swallow it in, that you were the weapon, you are the weapon? That trench of vacancy and life made dead, where sight is not sight and the dark is the dark is the dark—to be torn and set white ablaze when you fashioned bones into a plow, brain tissue into rope. Claw, never let go. Split of ice, split of dusk. Air. Light. III Little thing, think thoughts of spring, ice glinting under white suns and skin, skin, skin that is no longer glacial, no longer deathless. Think of the vitality, rosé in the flesh of forearms and neck. Supine, your hot blood on shining snow, one sharp rust-red more beautiful than the muted, submarine womb of any lake. Think of skimming fingers over this smooth, knight-silver dagger of life. IV Little thing, live this season of pain and cold light but know that, as the lake surface comes to life and spring sings a song that skims its face, you will melt like warm snow and wet the rifts and cracks of earth made stiff, by command of the sun, mother and executioner. Spring brings birth and death, and you, love, dearest darling snow child, must know-- all will fleet, but the great and precious go first, always, back to that blue tarn of eternal sleep. |
Angela Chen is a rising junior who loves to dabble various avenues of the written word. She loves nature metaphors, Shakespeare, mango and passionfruit boba, drizzling open-window evenings, and the solace that writing brings her.