Frozen In

Venice, December Ours are the only mouths to taste with this smothering slow touch, and the only steps to sink like bellsounds and cave deep into the marble snow. Women who go to the window to push their arms out to the snow and then bring the shutters back in follow us as we fall past their eyes where the black night lives. We are snowflakes at last, as the thick never locked, never closed doors follow us through squares of light their windows have left on the snow. Once again, warmth that falls, again, though our tracks fill and slow.