On the bed where you sit, the sheets are deep,
Warm still with the skin of two asleep,
Like a blubberous coat made of feathers--
Like penguins could once fly--
But fading. It's the fever. It's that
Heat around your eyes
Which made you rise, which made you check.
               She's still there, still
with every folktale quality, paraphrased in
letters to your friends. Your own
seal-skinned sister of selene, slender
as she is mysterious, still across
The room, yours and hers. A small concave,
A raised windowsill for her to sit on
And look across the ice stretched.
Through the glass you can't hear:
Cracks reforming the delta, the undertow thawing--
Breaking like joints of a bone: the din of Spring, Her
Thermocline. What a long way across,
You think by the look in her eyes.
A reaching without movement.
               Swallow, blink,
Narcissus, remember why she stays.
It's cozy on the bed, still. Between
Your thighs and the downy, crimped comforter.
Your calves sweat even as your knees chitter.
Your head sways. How can she think of it out there?
The biting cold--ravenous--nipping
From up nutrient-poor soils. Permafrost.
Where would she go, under the black profile?
Look closer, imbecile, at her.
Her feet dabble over a vent grate
In a way suggesting fluency--The air spreads
and warms the room around either hairless leg,
indeed unprepared for the winds.
Her back is to the window,
Splitting the tepid and the tundra.
Imagine how the air outside just
Overwhelms the window entirely,
Cold to the touch and spreading,
through transferance, to the air inside.
She feels the naturalized currents
which force warmer air up and
spread the cold to her skin, inches
Away, frigid feet from the furs
She bought.
               She is transition. Understand?
While one side is cooled, the other is curious
with warmth, the middle is
unqualified with moonlight, ignoring all temperature.
A crack even you can hear. The river is broken.
Her body starts. Eyes wide, sitting on all senses,
Feral. She'll watch the divide tumble and spin
How the wind swings into the water
Shaking, rippled like a belly of fat,
A sky quivering in anticipation, moaning
Against the windows. Makes her
Pull, arching, breasts
Nearing the pane; she needs this:
Satyr, have you ever seen a desire like it?
The body relaxes, sorting thoughts.
Hands wringing in her lap,
Blinking, her jocular cheek slopes flat.
She's spinning a single ring on her knuckle,
The one holding your nightstand from blowing away with the wind.
She turns.
               Fever season's over.
Tell us, Bede, have you seen lips like those before?
Take some grinning flower one hemisphere over,
Two quarters ago. You'll be writing
Those lips for years to come,
Hoping she comes home.