Snow Queen
–Vicki Feaver

I’d melt in your houses.
I hide in blue shadows –
appearing only at night:

a bride in a glittering veil,
pale and shining
as if lit from inside.

You offer me a snowman:
a frozen dummy
with eyes of coal.

But I want a husband
with a heart in my bed,
who’ll lie with me

where the snow’s blown
layer on layer like petals,
drifting to sleep in a heat

like hot sand, like ashes,
the water in his blood
turning to crystals of ice.

Photo by Tobias Keller on Unsplash