at temperatures below zero celsius for years twice-over, grounds preserve as permanent frost. a collage of sediment and biomass deposits over time. the shock-still of a landscape, once humming and breathing, rendered inert. like robert frost—clings, hangs, occasionally bites beyond the apocalypse. some slow death, protracted in the snow.
what are all the ways to preserve something?
to pickle, ferment. bottle up in pressurized jars, stow away in dimly-lit cabinets. desiccate until the sun vaporizes shape. souse in brines too sour to nurture.
to clutch, protect. to hold it so close to the chambers of the heart. keep fingers wrapped around it, anywhere hands can touch. insist it is important in each promise.
a mid-day stroll by the lakeside; dante froze his sinners in a lake, after all. amble along lightly-tread paths, trampled and tracked anew. soil and soot trapped in the grooves of a rubber sole. glacial lakes like glass, rippling and crystal-clear. look down and see yourself looking back.
bundle your vulnerabilities beneath insulating layers, bare self sheltered under thermal shades of blacks and whites. whispers of winter nipping at your earlobes, without relent. a chill that creeps into your bones, rattling and howling, that won’t ever shake out. is part of you now. a cold you remember. nests itself deep under your flesh, makes a new home for itself.
winter is scarcity: a season that grants in stark majesty, but turns on its belly and reveals the vorace of its appetite. insatiable, always starved. a sole individual as a beacon of warmth, for miles on desolate end. the radiant pulse of a ninety-eight degree body enveloped in a down puffer. the curl of a shaky breath lingers in the still air. the wind reaches out with desperation, licks at numb cheeks and chapped lips. wants, you provide (if only, you could keep it in).
the frost does not forgive. frost does not recognize time, nor any man-made convention. frost merely collects.
find: worn-out sneakers with battered soles that no longer fit. fleeting accomplishments, old math test, participation ribbon. honeyed-caramels from grandma’s living room. blonde doll with roughly chopped hair, game console powered by a dead battery. saving graces, torn blanket, princess mug.
could be a graveyard, a scrapbook, a scrapyard.
suggest warmth, and traitor, begin to thaw. the hint of a blazing fireplace, of letting the right people in. it is an act of violence, an insistence of pain prior to relief. stings and strikes, heat sings. hard edges peel away from the frozen core, all the visible boundaries phasing along the liquid-solid line.
a tightrope: left to solid, right to liquid. thrown out of equilibrium; thrown from one state to another. (it’s wild; it’s out of control—it’s an inevitability). natural systems tend toward entropy, and thermodynamics demands the price of the melt. the irony thrums, feel it as a molecular vibration: you, warm again, as the ordained agent of chaos.
stripped bare, forged ahead. made and remade. what is left to preserve?