Outside:
-34°C

I name the cold.
I do not answer it.

Inside:
the leaning body.
The fire before me.

Birch,
grown slow,
white with years –
open your sun.

Open.
Open.

Heat,
take my legs in hand.
Heat,
hold what trembles.

Polar wool,
reach forward.
Reach.

The house is paced.
The house is known.

By paws.
By breath.
By silver siblings
who measure what lives.

Fire,
traveller of mute space,
carried without breath,

Fire,
kept in trunks,
kept in years,

Fire,
released,
contained,

Murmur.

Click.
Crackle.
Speak.

Tell me again
the laws of warmth.
Tell me again
how the human stays.

Under stars.
Under cold.

My eyes enter the dance.
My ears lose their way.

Fire thinks.
Fire makes time.

I lift the ambiguous human.
I do not resolve it.

I am not reading.

I am being survived –
by fire,
by dream.

Cold presses close.
Cold circles.

I name the void.
I do not answer it.

The house holds.
The fire holds.

Again.
Again.