Carol Ann Duffy — Cold

It felt so cold, the snowball which wept in my hands, and when I rolled it along in the snow, it grew till I could sit on it, looking back at the house, where it was cold when I woke in my room, the windows blind with ice, my breath undressing itself on the air. Cold, too, embracing the torso of snow which I lifted up in my arms to build a snowman, my toes, burning, cold in my winter boots; my mother's voice calling me in from the cold. And her hands were cold from peeling then dipping potatoes into a bowl, stopping to cup her daughter’s face, a kiss for both cold cheeks, my cold nose. But nothing so cold as the February night I opened the door in the Chapel of Rest where my mother lay, neither young, nor old, where my lips, returning her kiss to her brow, knew the meaning of cold.