The Museum of Thawed Things

We entered the cold room of summer, where the river wore a glass sleeve, and every pebble held a tiny sun. Your hand was a map of accidental roads.

A bell in a distant field kept dissolving, tin becoming birds, then breath. I watched a shadow unlace itself from the heel of a passing cloud.

Under the bridge, rust bloomed like a slow rose, its petals flaking into our pockets. We spoke in the language of thaw, soft consonants, water leaning on stone.

At dusk the heat returned our names, letters rising from the soil like steam. We left the room unlocked, so the thaw could keep curating itself.