Splintered Quiet

I stepped out where the ice groaned,

a brittle voice breaking underfoot.

Splits spiderwebbed sharp and cold,

a thousand fractures in frozen glass.

The sound was a slow war,

a whisper that thundered,

a crack that split the silence

like glass breaking inside a quiet room.

Each snap echoed deep in my chest,

a pulse out of sync with the thaw,

reminding me how fragile the surface is,

how beneath, everything shifts and waits.

And the ice never waits long—

it breaks and bends,

a story told in sharp splinters,

unfinished, raw, and cold.