(Original art by Sarah Drury)

I’ve been here too long.
Sitting in this barren kingdom.
Breath exhaling, moist to crystalline,
and my lungs cascade.
Plumes of a pulmonary, lovesick swan.
Both yearning for a mate.
This colourless existence
bleaches our beauty.
The whiteness,
oh, the whiteness,
is killing me.

They say I have a frosty heart.
Icy, gliding frozen tears
like winter butter
across the surface of an artic lake.
And I taste like tender Eskimos
as I glaciate myself in igloos
and my door becomes a sheet of ice.

It’s been so long
since you held me in furnace arms,
my love.
I always dreamt of happy ever afters.
Never thought the crows of death would stalk me,
and I’m choking on black feathers.

I’ve tried, my love, I’ve tried.
Till my eyes were the glistening moon
and the sun dare not even
speak your name.
I’ve played the sorry widow.
Years floundering in the memory of us.
It was not just your death.
I died too.
The glacial landscape beckoned me.
Frozen teardrops my rendezvous,
and the ice-maiden took me
as her own.

Sarah Drury 2020