Warm bodies pressed up close. Love in pauses, in waiting. Love in three seconds of mingled breath. Her fingers dancing on his cheek, his head on her chest rising and falling with her breaths.

But time will tell.

Her embrace is a lingering exaggeration. A long-limbed, awkward embrace. An incomplete kiss.

Listen to how still the air is now.

His knowing. Her knowing. And each to their own.

Her fingers freeze as she reaches towards his hand. The harsh frost envelopes her arm, traveling up to her lips, down to her ankles. Icicles form at her elbows and wrists. There is snow in her veins, slowly being pumped through ventricles in her heart.

And while she stills in her frosty state, he kisses her chilled cheek and leaves her.

The beat of her heart is slow and steady, but the snow has begun to clog the arteries, has begun to flood her lungs, to dam her nerves.

Spring will come, as it always does. But time will tell if her bones will thaw, if she will move again with raw melting muscles, if she won't be able to see her own breath every time she sighs.