Frostbite
All snowflakes look very much alike;
like little white dots.
-The Smithsonian
They walked from club to club,
arms chain-linked. By the third club,
stumbling, holding tight, as if the other
would vanish when grip slipped.
In the steaming cacophony of another
club, cheap vodka and vermouth
perfumed their sweat as they feigned
the familiarity of lovers.
Snowflake—
the word fell featherlike as if the other
were not just another white dot on the horizon
—so similar to so many others—as if they
had come close enough to bask in delicate
flaws: a thin scar above an eyebrow
left from a childhood game of chicken
with a brother, the dappled freckles,
summer’s seething sun edging currents
that raged through one’s eyes.
Names are
stones thrown into a confluence of rivers.
Martinis, our antifreeze, brace against the cold.
