Layers provide
refuge,
buttoned, zippered,
wrapped.
Months of silence have
settled in,
long nights of
sharp, crystalline snow,
piled thick and heavy.
But I am old,
and you are older.
Time has substance
unlike before.
Crystals lose their edges,
Rounding into droplets,
eased by the warmth of
spring.
Conversation surges and ebbs,
no longer tracing the shoreline,
but lingering in deep water.