Self-Portrait as a Block of Ice

What the tongue wants.

Supplication and the burn

of crystals expanding.

To be, always, a waxing,

a waning, and, in waxing

again, not ever the same.

Waste and deferral.

Accumulation and deferral.

You are flesh,

and you are water,

though of the flesh,

you are only muscle,

and of the water,

you are saltless and clean.

Be a caution, a reckoning,

be a thing that breaks

before it bends.