winter

there is a cold that creeps in, under blanket it rests on your warm foot beneath the sheets and the cold hand of it drags you out of bed your whole body flung to the ground in a thumping ache and you sit upright and put on your clothes and shoes and tie up your hair and the cold goes away but then it meets you again on the road and whips up your skirt and coat and makes you brittle and hard, like snow that's thawed and refrozen, slick and hard like a wet bone. One day you have thawed and refrozen so much you're the size of a pear drop in winter's cracking  hand and you are swallowed in one gulp down its gullet.