cold, and the shapes of it.

often i think it is i who has been wrung out, and hung out to dry on the tideline. it would be easier that way, to lie and dry til the sea came to collect me, and nudge me higher or eat me whole. easier easier than this endless insufferable circle we are treading. we are frigid, we step in each others' snowy footprints, following, doubling, spiralling: further, further, further apart.

ice, too, on my forehead, a rectangular lump on a fresh purple egg in my hair. i am waiting to pass out, or vomit, or lose my mind, but my mind is addled anyway i think and probably it hardly matters.

i am numbing pain (the pain of being oceanless, the pain of unspooling circles, the pain, too, of non-conformist blocks of head-ice) with fairytales: cuddled in my bed with typer and a notebook, i catch the gossamer threads of another world and tie them to a page so they cannot float away. i hadn't realised how many threads there were, or how many pages they would claim.

i want to dye cream with turmeric and beetroot and thistles. i want to make a necklace of pomegranate seeds for my love. i want to be a tree, and sink my roots in some soil and arch my arms over somewhere bare and bricky. i want to join a forest. i want to grow a pod. i want someone to unpeg me from my tideline and take me somewhere else. not circular. not rectangular. or egg-shaped.