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
Pelgris 