Cold

Snuggled under the spell of the Doordarshan newsreader who only looked at me, I first felt the adult flush of a Cold War chattering the stormy newsclip transmitted from the snow-blinded USA and USSR which tinkled and drifted the two ice-cubes floating in my synthetic orange drink. Soon after, marooned bare on a glacial ice slab licensed to bring me back from a fever burning 226 Fahrenheit I had tasted foreign at the age of eleven That careening through a coldness so hostile on your skin the bone-deep chills dawning a winter on any spring. But when the Roja girl blinked her wonder at the snow-capped peaks with a fistful snow melting her sweet diffidence a thrill, rippling red my cold sweat pores, strictly embargoed in my home with radioactive threats and a wintry silence the coldness of a war. Many moons later under a holidaying sun heckled by two guards at the Smithsonian Museum I saw my breath fogging under those icicle stares— daggered once between Bush and Gorbachev foretelling the days —a frozen glass lake. So when Neil Gaiman asks, “What you need to be warm?” this winter that stares the cold-footed Syrian refugees stranded for a state I have one thing to say: Winter is always cold.