I was a poor boy; you were a bright light
I was a sinner and you were a snake
Cold begets cold and if he were a man made for softness, it might appeal to him. The likeness echoing from her might pull at him like gravity. Might pique his interest. Might pull him forward so that he might dip his head toward the mirror and then fall beneath it. But he is no such thing. He is no soft man and he just stands there, quiet and still. He tilts his antlered head to the side and looks down to the greeting of ice that slithers across the floor like a serpent.
His own branches from him, but it lacks the grace of hers. It is not gentle or probing. It’s a violent crack, like a deadened tree finally succumbing to the heart of winter.
It nearly makes him startle, the prey instinct in him not so smothered.
It is only by pure stubborn will that he doesn’t move. That his own ice jumps toward hers in a violent burst of speed and then a quiet stilling. It meets and recedes almost immediately, as if he could not believe he would have allowed a touch, separated from him as it was.
“I am many things,” he says and wonders at how it sounds like a snarl. How such a simple interaction can leave him like a cornered animal. How weak and vulnerable he still is, even with this raging blizzard now trapped beneath his skin. “Cold is one of them,” he allows, softening his gunmetal voice so that it sounds more cordial and less like an attack.
There is silence, and he is once again brought face to face with his own ineptitude. Would she interpret the silence in some way? Or would she look through the veneer and see a man who has never flourished in company? Who has only ever known the wrong thing to say?
An ache in his chest, a painful swallow.
“Brigade,” a bullet, a greeting, the only thing he knows to offer.
shook like some old souls when our bones broke
swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame
