Visiting Emma


There are icicles
growing inside my walls,
can you see them? I can smell them —
like chlorine, they smell like
blue snow, can you smell fruitcake?
fruitcake in the icicles? they've been
growing there for days,
hammering flat leaves of veins
beneath the plaster. The plaster's cold
because of the ice, turn the fire on?
no I can't do that. They'd melt and
flood the cavities, soak through the ceiling
and the floorboards and drown,
I'd drown in the night. And the fruitcake
would rot. No one else can see them,
how's your nose?