oh

How would you say cold
to one who'd never shivered--

and if, after years of sounding
it out, you found a way,

could you be heard as you'd need
to be? Want precedes language

as cold pleads for snow, the night
whistling through long bones

of the thigh, numb fingers, toes,
the piece of ice disappearing

slowly as it writes diminishing circles
around the breast of the lover

who had begged to be bound to the bed,
one nipple budding with need

nearly unspeakable, ache of teeth
and tongue, moan so low. Oh.

[David Citino, 'Saying the Cold', from The Invention of Secrecy]