Ice begins as a simple thing: 
a hardening of water, 
a pause in the world’s pulse. 

It slicks the roads, 
glazes the troughs, 
draws white lines 
across the morning. 

Children test it with their heels. 
Farmers curse it. 
The river wears it 
like a tight, bright mask. 

Ice is just weather, 
you tell yourself;
a temporary firmness, 
a cold that will pass. 

But then you notice 
how it waits, 
how it watches, 
how it forms without asking 
and stays without permission. 

How it can trap a body 
in a moment, 
hold it still, 
make movement dangerous. 

How it decides 
who gets to cross 
and who goes under. 

By the time you realise 
this ice has nothing to do 
with winter, 
the frost has already crept 
up the spine of the story:
quiet, rigid, 
and very much 
by design.