Dream defrosting

I open the fridge.
In the freezer a forest
made of a million speleothems
crushed in a cubit
begins to thaw.

Ice-shards peel from the frozen peas.
Ice-beads slither behind the butter.

My teeth chatter.
My frost breath curls
hollow as a ghost — bleached
as my father's blood
when it disintegrated
at that solstice —
my feet chillblained.

Hollow as a your grandmother's
crying echoing among the dead.

Mummified in ice
blue irides stare snow-blinded
in dead sockets
under the tundra.

There are my dancing shoes,
the ribbons untied,
tossed in a forest.
Moth-wings glitter at my waist,
my muslin lifted on a nocturne.
Under chandeliers,
under my skirts,
upon parquetry polished to glass
my satin slid.
A thousand soles worn to ruins,
the dancers immured

among the substrata
beneath the crisper —
they couple and begin
their shuffling.