Playing around (a night in the snow)

Guzzle the snow until it ices you all over

Drink it like your favorite drug

And lose your very shadow in the whiteness

Rising up against the sky

There’s a hole in the night where I threw a snowball

I climbed up the hill, panting,

As you slid down the opposite way and we crossed, briefly brushed wings then went our own ways

I got at the top with a stich at my side

and stopped

and looked out

An armour of silence, a thick coat of answers, the unquestioned – just there

Snow up to my knees, up to my chest and in my mouth

Bury me in the snow strangers

Let me swallow it until it ices me all over

Let it cuddle me to the ground in its cruel softness

We scrape the trees free of their white skin and shoot shreds of it at one another

The sky has let all its planets scatter into white dust.

In our raw hands scraps of stars.

And we laugh until we burst open, stiches in every part of our body

No coat of frost can silence our panting breaths as we chase invisible shadows and lie down on the crinkly stomach of the earth and swing our arms, spread them as wings and hope to become snow angels.