Winter friends need each other.

That’s my theory, anyway. Like warm orzo
spooned into mugs so big you need two
hands to hold them. I slump closer
to strangers on the trolley on days like these.

Your theories are like mine, about peanut
butter preferences and childhood rebellion.

In summer, we would have hummed like horse
flies, taunted those treacherous whips of tails.
Basked on a beach. Shaken the sand from our towels
and found our own ways home. But I can see
how violently you shrink from the bite of winter.

Our mouths stretch open. Pop-jaw wide.

We laugh inwards, and so often, that we clutch
our throbbing backs-of-necks. Half drowning, I wake
up swimming in a large house red eye. God bless
room for cream. You say you want to feel
everything. So do I. Our oblique couch bodies.

Microscopic flakes of enamel laced on tongues
like shards of broken shields. Our jousting
mouths, stretching open once again.