Pelgris

Exhale
Curved sinuous
Turned crystalline
Cuts tongue
Choked words spill onto bloody snow

Hand caresses soft skin
Warmth blooms
Frozen over

Cracked slough
Weights too heavy to bare
Fall away

Pepper frozen blood
Shrapnel burst
Flayed of protective cover

Hopeful anew
Slowly dying
In the brittle
Bone chill
Of morning
Long before the dawn