New Poem

Ice palace and the golden sun 

Sitting in my queen's chair of ice, 

legs crossed, my frozen palace, 

elegant items and furniture

sculpted from this thick block of freeze.

Cold but it holds me tight,

thick ice walls blur my vision,

into wobbly lines, like peering through

an ice cube. 

I can't see beyond these familiar

cold walls. 

It holds me so tight like a mother

whispering that it will be all right

as long as I let myself be held.

Ice walls conforming to my body.

So long as I don't break out, things

will be fine, it tells me softly,

"Don't consider the possibility."

As much as I want to run free,

it holds me down like a doctor 

pushing down on a wounded soldier 

on the battlefield, screaming, 

"Do not get up. You are wounded.

You must give up the fight," 

And I try to run off anyway, 

to fight towards dreams 

that are heavy as gold, 

thick as metal, gleaming hot like the sun, 

all running through my heart every moment, 

as much as I try to stiffle the sound of my dreams

falling down like rain sliding down a window, 

every moment I wait and hesitate, 

parts of my heart are crying for what could have been.

I want to fight. 

But this cold terror is here with me, 

reminding me of what I lost. How much. Everything.

And with nothing, at least I have nothing more to lose.

That is something to keep. To hold close. 

Nothing is my everything.

And that is my only comforting thought. 

My ice walls are my palace, and my four-poster

bed and my stuffed bear, all chiseled from this

frozen crystal. My rooms and plans and hopes,

all frozen solid. 

But I still dream of moments 

that opened like stage curtains 

with giant circular lights blinding 

white, pouring possibility onto that stage,

 those moments that kill you with their intensity

 but you're happy to die, to give into that moment fully.

I remember those moments. Those maybes. 

I remember handing my heart over, only to lose it for good.

I had to search for it, for years. and in a dark haunted forest, 

I finally found it. And now it's finally mine 

again. 

I don't want to lose it ever again, so I tie it to my finger

like a leash. Like a balloon on a child's hand. 

Never to part

again from my own heart. 

And in my cold block of ice, I peer out, and I can see that sun so bright, 

and it melts the corners of this cube, but I sit so carefully, waiting. 

For something. Anything.

But not really expecting much,

because to see the sun again. 

to break through and leave behind my thick ice walls, 

I'd be a snail without a shell on a plate of escargot. 

And I won't allow myself to be served up like that, not again. 

Not when I saw what happened before. 

All my trust and those small stiches we held our love together

with, were all pulled out until it was a pile of cut fabric,

and then you burned it right to the ground.

Those flames didn't kill you or hurt you at all. 

It was a flicker in your mind, it was a stranger passing you on the street, 

it was a piece of junk mail in a thick stack in your mailbox -- it all meant nothing to you.

 I meant nothing to you. I did. And I still do. 

But you, you meant everything to me. Everything. 

I was a burn victim, even part of my skin destroyed. 

And so I stand in my ice box, dreaming of sunshine. 

Of places where I could run faster than I've ever felt, 

with my dreams now carried in my heart, 

gleaming like gold, 

a spotlight pouring right out of my chest, 

and taking my stage curtains with me everywhere, 

every moment a beauty. A treasure. 

Lived and killed each second, 

nothing wasted in contemplation and fear. 

That is how it could be. 

When I finally see beyond this blurred ice, and the

hot sun melts my fear into water, and I can 

reach out to hold my heavy gold dreams

in my arms, forever.

Skin grown back, healed, sun shine making me glow,

golden.