on Tuesday morning, you ordered orange juice with ice.

you politely accepted a menu from the waitress, though to you, it was irrelevant.

orange juice. ice.

as the waitress returned, I watched your weak eyes latch onto the carelessly un-iced orange juice, and you trembled as it began to drain away the rest of your energy,

the energy that you had so attentively gathered for yourself earlier that morning.

you stared down at your slippers as the waitress flooded you with special menu options, her muddled echoes growing louder and louder until I thought my eardrums might burst,

but your gaze at your slippers remained.

you began convulsing, and it sent me back to my fourth grade science project on the Earth’s crust.

I remembered how I demolished a small Lego city in front of 30 wide-eyed classmates, half of whom now live their lives behind bars.

you were more of the fault line than the earthquake.

the waitress gave up and I gave in as she sashayed away, muttering to herself about the disgrace that is the new generation.

I took the seat next to you and we enjoyed the silence together,

until I asked the barista for a glass of ice.

you knew it was for you. I looked at you, and you looked at your slippers.

eventually we spoke, and I offered up the ice,

and just as you wouldn’t accept your mother back into your life after her 12 years of abandoning you, you wouldn’t accept my ice.

you said there was no point.

There was.

I dragged you outside into the cold December air,

and as I saw that your gray hoodie matched perfectly with the warm smokyness of our exhalations, you saw that my lipstick matched the blood that had spilled from your wrists the night prior.

then we laid down in the middle of the street.

I told you to stop dwelling on the iced juice that could never be, and you turned your gaze toward the sky.

we were now surrounded by it; tremendous arrays of shimmering icicles from above,

snowflakes returning to us in slow motion, and the cold reassurance of the ice under our backs.

we wrapped ourselves in it, and you said it would be enough ice for a while.

the next morning we went to breakfast,

and when your un-iced orange juice came back again,

we walked outside.