because you showed me how cold
can be welcomed into the body like a lover
because your bed is a deep-winter rustle
of leaf litter because you whispered
slow like the language of the frozen
because you’ve thinned yourself
to glass heart quivering on pause
because your brain is a Slush Puppie
your legs brittle enough to snap
because you will not snap
because your veins are steeped
in antifreeze because you suspend
hope as ice-crystals between the walls
of blood cells because you never stop
believing in beetles & birdsong the fat
glisten of peat-bog slugs because one day
you’ll piss out rivers of glucose &
the forest will spring open as you belt out
the old songs in a pond that throbs
with stars because it’s the only way to live
_________________
Victoria Gatehouse is a Zoologist and researcher based in West Yorkshire. Her poems have
been widely published in magazines and anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio. Her
second pamphlet, The Mechanics of Love, published by smith|doorstop, was selected as a
‘Laureate’s Choice’ by Carol Ann Duffy.
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