High and Bright and Fine and Ice by Darcie Dennigan

High and Bright and Fine and Ice

1. When the motorboat man asked me to love him
2. I whispered precipice
3. the word for the no-more-boyfriend feeling
4. because precipice contains ice (practically twice)
5. because I wanted teetering—
6. What? he said
7. Yes
8. His ears from the engines—so hard of hearing—his hands always so hot
9. Mid our first winter—I’d clung so long to the dock
10. he had to crowbar my fingers off
11. Each digit cracked so cleanly
12. Would you say they break like icicles? I asked sweetly
13. I knew I was nothing! But if I could sustain one song—
14. I is, I is, I is I is I is
15. I could be: ice
16. Sex on the bathroom’s cold marble counter was best
17. I whispered statuette, monument
18. What? he, sculpting my legs, said
19. Yes
20. The child? I named her Cecily
21. It sounded like iced lily
22. For pure, I said pristine
23. At the ocean, I said brine
24. Isle for vacation; for flowers, edelweiss
25. But when I said (only of late, late!) I choose ice
26. Brittle pearls broke behind my syllables
27. Did he hear me?
28. Again, twice, thrice:
29. For my love
30. we would need to live
31. in a great pyramid
32. We would need to sleep
33. beneath the continental shelf
34. with Antarctic crust blanketing us
35. The only driveway to any kind of house
36. is an iceberg-ridden Northwest Passage
37. When I whispered universe
38. you were to translate it as
39. one bright line
40. one bright rime