Cool gray.
Clean white.
Muffled, covert blue.
Safe and spare, the house resists heartbreaking human heat, the demands of purple flesh and red blood.
Ice house, clean and clear.
It cannot long hold sway.
Even now, life’s inevitable chaos rises and memories begin to gather in corners.
Flowers poke through between stones.
New books settle on shelves, bringing wild, dangerous thoughts.
Sheets of dancing notes people the piano rack, threatening music.
We all do it.
Hoard the calm, grab up the quiet.
Pull in the drawbridge and pretend that peace is a natural state.
But you see, no saving can come where nothing is out of place.
The narrow way is only a choice when surrounded by unpredictability—orange points of pain—black chasms.
But they have not come yet.
For now, this cool fortress remains, still alive in the slow breaths of hypothermia, holding on, hoping.
We will understand its stranglehold before it’s too late.
God always burns hotter than we bargain.
Even now, the mist evaporates and the drawbridge begins to shudder.
He comes for us.
