I’m cold behind my ice. 

Its sounds scratch and scrape; with them, I shiver, freeze, and break. Restless, I feel constant unease. I move slowly, pick up energy, generate my own heat. 

But I can’t generate, regenerate.

I conform to my shape, chiseled out by winds of cool: not heat or warmth or light, but words so cruel.

My ice breaks, chips, and cracks. It becomes indented with stress: I do wrong, I say wrong, I feel wrong. I crack.

I am stagnant, frozen. I don’t flow. My head—it slows. And brain—freezes. Its its thoughts are fragments of ice, its particles. They are pain. They are ache. Slow slow sorrow. They scratch, chip away, refuse to flow—the solid state is stagnant; why can’t it flow? Why can’t I flow?

I’m not water.

I don’t move. I stick, stuck. My words fail. Fail to scrape and escape the cold. They thaw only to thicken. Thicken with the cold of doubt, the hailstorm of criticism. 

I reach for the light, but the shiver and shake… while others flow, I remain in my single state. Solid. Stagnant. Still and stiff. Any sudden move could crack and blister my ice. It’s already scarred with permanent indentations: cracks and scrapes, haunting breaks, fears and doubts and pains. Memories—my memories—memories of me that wake in the wake.

I long for the light. I reach only to crack and crumble, crack and crumble, crack and crumble—I cry. My tears freeze over too quickly—tears as impossible as water.

I cry, crack, and crumble. But I move. Closer to the light, closer to the warmth, the melt. I feel it near, transparent as ice but just as clear.

I warm, I give way and relax, move closer now closer to a state of flow.

I break the ice.

I flow; I know.

I am water.