Ice melts against your skin
a heart, rebellious, dreaming
still –
Water freezes against my heart,
skin inverted, my body inert but raging
still –
The impossibility of knowing;
the persistence of wanting:
who would have thought it so?
simple refusal to live without you
paradox of opposite energies –
I boil water into cubes
to cool my steaming pores
or at least to dull the knife
I plunge deep into my own heart.
Susan Smith Nash