Frozen Lake

I felt you

Frozen in the lake beside me

A final thought floating soundlessly in eggshell eyes.

What was it we had planned to remember this time?

Something of consequence which seems now so translucent a flame.

I waited for you

To spasm wildly back to life

To blink and laugh the ice into crystalled bubbles.

Didn’t you promise that we would recall together softer sounds?

This blue-grey fading of your sunlit dance cannot be that song.

I left you

Convulsing upward for the membrane of air

Memory of your dirt-warmed hands already fleeing.

Were there once fingers on mine spinning the dials of summer into harvest?

The thought of finding loses importance in a conflict of breath on watery lungs.

I forgot you

Suspended in the ice of a made moment

So sparking pulses of accusing orbs startle in my electric mind.

Or is it the look of regret and grateful parting as you released our agreement?

To sink peacefully into my chasm of remembered forgettings between in breath and out.

- Sherri-Lee Lavender