Extremes

Run a faintingly hot bath
as though you're boiling a ham,
but leave the window wide
so that snow blusters in to land and
fastly melt on your face;
it's extraordinary what you'll do
to feel something.
Brew the strongest coffee,
drink the most potent of drinks,
choke the air with the headiest of incense.
Slide into an iced estuary in
next to nothing and
breathe your way through the shock.
Walk for miles or better yet, run
until your muscles scream.
Melt them in a salt bath.
Feel, numb, repeat.
You drain the bathwater,
weightless no more,
heat belting off your lobster arms
like graveyard dry ice in a cheap horror.
The snow-chill goosebumps your skin,
you watch it fall outside,
and swathe yourself in softest towels,
leaving behind you a
sandalwood bath salt-scented drift.