My 97 beats-per-minute heart
doesn’t know it could pendulum to deep
freeze response, and I have envied those
who can spare some fear

for the dark, but I, too, do
become more fearful
in it,
so I know a full, but only a full,

thing or two about your heaviness of winter—
our curse to forget the hibernation our ancestors
were too proud to accept—so I would like to know
a full—but only

one or two full things more—most,
how my 97 beats-per-minute heart
might slow beneath two feet of snow,
my fight response weighted down,

my sighs and gasps compressed,
my toes so numb that all I’d feel
was the chill of the air on my nose,
and to experience this as

cold,
not a question mark, what if, what might
how can, what must I, only
cold,

and whatever other
adjectives I would know
if my anxious thoughts didn’t always
bury all my senses in the dark.

first published in Wishbone Words