ICE GIRL

People out walking in the frost
wrap themselves in coats, scarves, hats, gloves;
believing that without all this paraphernalia
they will freeze to death.
Well, perhaps they're right.
But I walk through it completely unclothed
because I am made of ice. They still tell
of the hoar frost that clung to tree and mountain
at the time my mother expelled me from her body
amid a pool of blood that instantly froze,
and how the midwife had to rub some life
into my tiny pure white body.
I am daughter of the Ice Queen -
born in north Iceland, raised in coldness,
and six month nights were all I understood.
I had to stay one jump ahead of the summer
because I knew it's alien nature would thaw my body
and burn out my pale eyes.
So I hid beneath the snow drifts
like a white vampire.
But it's harder now I've reached womanhood,
as I'm driven to flirt with the sun
and be caressed by his deadly rays
like all the other women I see around me.
He is like no other lover - dangerous
and therefore irresistibly alluring.
What happens when fire and ice combine?
The Aurora Borealis tells my story.
I think I'm inviting chaos. My reflection
is up there in that northern evening sky -
all the colours of coldness, remoteness,
a reminder of what I am...

OK, OK, I'll come clean:
the above is all fantasy, you know!
In truth, I am an ice sculpture that adorns
a corridor in this year's Ice Hotel.
But I so want to be human.
You see, my beauty encloses no Soul.
There is only cold rigidity inside me.
I can only hope that one day global warming
will come and put an end to this half-life:
will reduce me to a pool of water
that cannot think, cannot feel,
and cannot yearn to be loved.


Just to let you know...I have been diagnosed with cancer, so have lots of X Rays, scans etc. coming up before I have surgery. 
I will visit you all as and when I can in between all that is going on...try keeping me away!! ;))