Her Grave Exhaled a Winter Storm

She said she was going to marry him. “His touch is like frostbite from snowflakes evacuating a purple, icicled sun.” He didn’t hate her; he just didn’t love her, and it was echoed in every feigned embrace. But she found pleasure in winter.
I loved her. “You’re leaves raked onto me to be lit.” I could see myself with her, naked on a bed of pine needles, pure, the wind evaporating our sweat. For a lifetime, I would hold fast to her waist, but she refused to let the snow melt.
The glow of her ring always blinded my eyes to tears. He placed it on her finger simply to have her. “She’s the only window clinching frost.” On days of valor, I dove into the ring’s diamond and walked its hallways, shimmering rays that stabbed my feet. Once, a ray broke through my skin, and a stream of blood stretched to the end of the hallway. I collapsed from the source of her joy.
In October, she came crying. He heard about me and tried to take her; I held her waist. In a yard of jack-o-lanterns and candy wrappers, we kissed. I saw her gaze focused on a flickering light. “Fireflies are the only insects that care enough to ablaze my palms.” She wasn’t wearing her ring.
I held her until the muscles in my arms tore. I held her until December. She couldn’t stay any longer; her scars were beginning to heal. During a lapse of insomnia, I awoke to her squeezing her arm, preventing a scar from leaping onto me. She rushed outside to the snow and buried it, and her body blackened with euphoria.
And she married him. I was the only one to attend her wedding. I was the only one to weep.
After dreaming a year away, I brought her a jar of fireflies. Her palms froze their fire.