On the cold ground I rest. I rest my breath from having spent inhaling life so deeply. My cells break open and in creeps the sun to fill me. The emptiness provides a space for the warmth I crave. My muscles chase a deep ache around the confines of my heart. I am rattled.

I am here now, there is no denying it – and watch the sky playout before me, an inaudible act, a quiet shift in time. I know it passes, so does the cold. Stacks of ice and my body splayed on top. What shelf parks my love, which beats within? I have lost track, not of the clouds passing over me. I grab one with my soul and cling to its vapor as if for direction. In turbulent times I park my limbs right here and stretch out of myself.

Fibers across the shell I house day in day out seep through the ice and wrap themselves around love, caressing the light, dim and shaken, but in its entirety never disturbed.

An unknown finger traces the spine of my back, moves across my neck and tickles my ear. I do not know it. I relax in its presence like a child in the arms of its mother. Breath returns to me. A beat stirs my heart. In cracks I feel water release from ice, though I cannot see, I know the sun shines. I slowly stand on my feet, then leap. The trust I lost pulls every raindrop back into the cloud reversing pain into love. I am still here.