The Wintered Wood

I walk within a wintered wood,
breath curling from my parted lips
to swirl before me as I wander,
to warm my frozen fingertips.

I feel the silence pressing in,
a familiar friend who waits for me
beneath the icy trails ahead
and in the weeping, snowbound tree.

No chirps escape the bony branches,
no snap of twigs found underfoot
in this wintered wood I wander,
through ice and thorns and a crimson soot

found only in my own domain,
these hushed, forgotten halls.
This palace, made of ash and oak,
is where my heartbeat falls.

But even as this world is mine,
this valley beyond the hills,
there's something in the frozen air
which sleeps and shifts and chills.

I wander ever further in
to this wintered wood I keep,
but as the silence settles in,
I wonder if I've gone too deep.