Before the ice crept into your veins and settled,
Before the cracks in your heart were petrified,
Was there something other than ancient dust?
Hiding in the hollow echo of disused synapses,
Where nerves once sparked into singing chords
Rattled down time taut strings of frozen organs,
Buzzed through the vena cava and battered valves,
To swell lungs full with gasping, desperate breaths
While drum beats thundered, and the tempo jumped,
Crescendos of flustered words and twisted tongue,
Chasing the sun drenched notes from honeyed lips
To pin them down, caught upon a pulsing manuscript.

If there was once something more than what is now,
Then how did the rhythm crumble from its arches?
And why did the melody shatter sharps to flats
Tumbling from the stave etched in your arteries,
To clatter through the first of frozen teardrops,
That came when the ice first crept and settled in.