frozen roses

"I am broken in ways you can't see." A tear drips from my eyelashes and lands on my withered fingers. It feels like nothing. I feel nothing.

She gently covers my hands with her soft touch. I stare at her hands, gleaming in the sunlight, adorned by unforgiving knives. She reaches for me in the suffocating nothingness of the ice. I let myself feel the warmth of her fingers on the frozen stillness of my skin, and I wonder if I will bleed.

"That's all right, darling," I look up at her, and I see her own scars that mark her shadows, "So am I."

We stay there, whispering nothings to each other, and I let the ice melt, taking the blood and roses with it.