After I had burned alive a spell, spellbound

by the burning that bound me, I saw

an Ice Cross rising down to me through seablue

sky. This Ice Cross was the eye's cross,

submerged for years in the eye's

aqueous humor, an iceberg crux cracked off the Pole

Star and splashed deep—all this time to the surface surging.

The burning melted off my skin like rime,

and the Cross's seed-crystal ferned forth

like wiper fluid flash-freezing on a windshield.

Christ-frost plated the daylight,

a fast-branching, brittle fractal

sealing the spaces inside itself. At last

I could see the pane that separated me

from the one beyond me—a tiptoeing

child left out in the cold, eyes cupped

and trying to see in, his breath fogging the glass.