When I was in the 4th grade, I swallowed a block of ice.
It grew, and I collapsed into its embrace.
Perhaps driving these scissors through my chest, like an ice pick, would save me, I remember thinking.
The medication did its job, though.
My knowledge of the ice became fuzzy.
And summer came.
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When I was in the 9th grade, I learned the ice hadn’t thawed as I thought.
It had been instrumental.
I brought myself closer to it.
I screamed and sobbed on stage, and showed my frozen innards to an auditorium.
My performance was miraculous. Awe-inspiring.
But terrifying. Gruesome.
I retired.
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When I was in the 11th grade, a teacher saw right through me to the glacial within.
I petered home. I stabbed pencils into my wrists to assess the ice.
I failed. The pencils were dull. I wasn’t really trying.
I told a sad woman about it. I wanted her to be sad with me.
But she cowered, too.
I healed and sealed again.
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When I was in the 12th grade, love brought the summer thaw I’d been waiting for, as it tends to.
But he forced fresh cubes down my throat,
Shards through my eye sockets,
Blizzards into my lungs.
I let him.
It was comforting, being cold again.
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When I was in the 14th grade, I burrowed my way into my chest.
I extracted the ice. It melted in a display case.
I watched it disappear, with the others.
And then we watched my sanity slip away too.
I refroze just in time for spring.
Ice, after all, is quite an effective shield.
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Now the ice festers miles behind my sternum.
It floods my veins on cloudy days.
When the sun is on, it’s hardly noticeable.
When winter falls, its grip hardens.
Its touch is sometimes cool and comforting. Other times, it’s searing. Chilling. Sterilizing.

I’d like to see it thaw.
But who am I, if not frozen?