Bethlehem Steel - Cold and Colder

A woman's poems reacting to the end of a relationship. At first she is desolate (cold), lost and humiliated. Then (colder) her immune system kicks in and, realizing she is also a character in her story, not powerless, but a co-creator, she begins to stand up for herself and assert her right to life.

Excerpt:
perhaps
it was all the same to him
she thought
that he careened through life
leaving her more
or less

Excerpt:
this engine of silence
turns and grinds
my wheels of desire
burns fires of longing
melts me into red hot
remembrance lava

Excerpt:
can love show me how
to love myself?
will love fall like rain
moisen me
a sprout
to grow again?
to love myself

Excerpt:
dreams are seeds
he holds his dreams to himself
fertilizing no one
he would rather feel rejected
than let go and vent his dreams

permanently
in the dust