Burlington

I was on my way downtown, walking in a cold that made my legs and arms feel like numb limbs, pins and needles that wouldn't cease. The cars around me were twisting on their axles, front tires and back curling the frame into S's. I climbed into one with my cousin, a year younger than I but twice as tall, topped with dark brown hair and eyes twice as bright and blue.1

It was too hard for us to steer. The wheel felt like a toy under my palms: the car slipped right when I tugged left, no resistance between tires and pavement, no synapses firing, just blind motion. The ice was thickening, stronger than glass and more fearsome. It watched as traffic became more and more like an avalanche.2

Into the city we continued to swerve as patient cushions of air kept cars from colliding. A set of lights lay on its side, the red light smashed by concrete, strangled by wires. I kick the glass in on the yellow, the green is burned out. My cousin steps over them with her long legs and glides under an awning.3

Behind us a plate glass window glows faintly of lavender, it is glazed with frozen raindrops that carry echoes of music inside. We can see where the ripples were rooted mid-beat.4

I urge my cousin inside. At the bar a man is screaming that he knows our sins, his eyes are full of booze and caffeine, his hands are shaking with the chemicals in his veins. He skids them up my cousin's leg from ankle to thigh, his rough skin snaring on the elastic of her skirt. We run and she is crying, the man is screaming to love and destroy, the streets are still slick with ice. The people on the sidewalks, angry from the cold, huddle inside their jackets and turn their faces away.5

My cousin is bent like a broken tree to rest against my chest, she is crying and screaming for the rain to wash her clean. Out in the street it pours down her skin and glazes her legs stiff and smooth like pottery. People rush around us, they glare, they tell us to move, they wonder if she's crazy and step far aside. I have to shatter her out of the way.