nasal congestion justwrite

I have paper cuts on my tongue from trying to taste poetry. My dad sent me a Valentine's Day card, and his handwriting looked like shadows cast by foreign veins, clutching my heart with roots I can't pull up, squeezing until my pulse barely murmurs at my fingertips. I read the braille in your skin, trace the lines beneath your eyes and memorize their arc, match it to the whorl in my left thumbprint and tell you I've never seen anything like it. My eyes are so new light forgets to reflect off them. It sinks like the rocks I try to skip across the pond in your backyard. I pretend water doesn't know how to be anything but ice. I pretend my lips froze while embracing each other, that frost crawled up your hips while you were dancing. Cultured somatic cells of humans divide a set number of times before all dying at once. If you freeze them, when they thaw they continue as if time didn't stop. I tap this onto your eardrums while you sleep. I think of only this while I press snow angels into the hillside, only this and the sky, speckled with white as if it's still night time, me counting your dreams as though the sun will refuse to set this evening, will dig her orange fingernails into the horizon and cling like I do to the image of your earlobes, of the lines beneath your eyes. You kiss me and taste blood, poetry scratching at the corners of my mouth. My lips embrace each other, pretending to be frozen, pretending their cells aren't counting the minutes until nightfall.