Pieces of Winter (poem)

Undercover, you ask:
Is there warmth left at the core?
But I ask the same.

We drape blankets across
our thick sheets of December-land,
our bodies the known geography
bound under this bedridden winter burden.
Snow falls like tears from the stuffy clouds
above our physical map and I see
the rocky soil of your face has thinned
and paled in the cold. Mine is chipped.
We are tucked into the earth, frozen
to the fabric of our listless lives, suffocated
and dry in the burning, chaffing winds.
I open my hands wide beneath the atmospheric
covers while you twine silent
frost through my fingers, over my tongue,
binding me to you, to the choking
avalanche of our new winter, discovered
and explored from the comfort of our bed:
absent and empty of natural warmth
and overstuffed with these uninvited
pieces of winter, but still
the only place where we can
burrow or hibernate
or surrender to our core