Arbor Vitae

Lake ice melts from the bottom up.

Not where the eye can read it

Not in the clear language of cracks

Spidering across the surface

But in the hidden dark

Where water remembers its hunger

I stand in the solitary cold

Above that quiet undoing

In the exact spot

Where I know the inky black

Is at its deepest

Boots pressed to a veneer 

That still pretends to hold

The cold reaches for me

Its tendrils wend 

Through rubber and leather

Through bone

A thin persuasive voice whispering

"Come down" it says

"Come see what's already gone."

Above me the winter stars hard, innumerable

Familiar constellations fading

Into the static of unnamed suns

Their light a kind of indifference

I used to think they witnessed us that night

Do you remember?

How they leaned close

How they glittered their approval

When I asked you to stay forever

Forever.

The word feels brittle now

Like ice that looks thick enough

Until it isn’t

This lake knew me before you

Knew me when summers meant

Bare feet and sun-warmed docks

When the water held me up without care

The noise of those carefree days

Seems sacrilegious 

In this frigid cathedral

The slap of waves against aluminum hulls

Fireworks and crackling campfires

Laughter that carried across evenings

Spent counting shooting stars

The hum of old outboards and dragonflies

Like something that would never end

You stood here once too

Not in winter

No

We were all warmth then

All motion and light

We mapped our future on this water

As if its surface 

Were a scrying bowl

Instead of a veil

Now the forest keeps its silence

Branches locked in white stillness

Every living thing

Withdrawn into the hard work

Of surviving without warmth

There is mercy in that quiet

No voices

No explanations left to fail

Only the silent truth beneath me

That what breaks

Does not announce itself

The cold is higher now

Ankles, calves

And invisible tide rising from below

I imagine the ice giving way

Not in a splash and cry

But a soft surrender

A black mouth yawning

And I, finally

Sinking into something uncomplicated

No more surface

No more holding

No more struggling 

Just the black water

Taking me in

Like it always intended.

Above, the stars keep their distance

They do not flicker with grief

They do not avert their gaze

Indifferent attendees to a burial

Watching as they watched before

Unconcerned now with what dissolves

And what remains.