My feet draw the warmth in
like a Dementor,
exchange the sultry
lift of baseboards’ radiant dance –
all excitation and castanet crack –
for the clap of a snapping
branch that shatters
around expansion of its own frozen sap.
They’re cold like the color
of the sea at the darkest
anglerfish depths,
absolute black, like the most
vacant spaces between
stardust motes as they sail
away from each other
in the clearest obsidian waste.