Winter Love Poem: You're My Heaterbox Baby

For J.R.C.

The icicles on the willow danced & the heaterbox hummed.

You’re my heaterbox honey and your blood is hot,

the sweetest whistled harmony, you’re my wound’s blood clot.

You’re my heaterbox baby and your blood’s boiling hot,

you’re like gold on my soul, you make my eyes bloodshot,

while dilated, stark open, so I can look at you til time collapses.

Addicted, perpetual & unavoidable relapses, because you

warm me from the outside in and make my idle mind spin

nightly, fantasizing about you, my heated blankie.

You’re my yellow-letter hoodie-wearing vampire,

awake at 5 am in the dark. The winter is your season

if for no other reason than short days, long nights.

 I see the breath from your dear Whistles,

as they’re fluttering out your pursed lips

in perfect harmony. You’re winter squash with sweet honey.

Shovel scrapes the driveway, winter crackling, still silent.

I plug you into the wall, I turn you high. Even when you

come in from the cold, your skin is hot. Heaterbox.