Le Froid Lent

Lyrics

The subject presents with exposure.
The air, a scalpel.
We begin the observation at thirty-seven degrees Celsius.
Standard.

The first tremors are a protest.
An argument from the periphery.
The jaw clenches, a primitive engine trying to generate heat.
The skin mottles, a cartographer's panic.
Vasoconstriction.
The borders are closed.
All traffic is rerouted to the capital.
The thoughts begin to fray, like worn thread.
Simple questions now require... deliberation.

This is the slow cold.
Le froid lent.
Not a sudden shock, but a negotiation.
The mercury descends, one deliberate step at a time.
The core hoards its warmth, a miser counting his last coins while the kingdom freezes.

Thirty-five degrees.
Shivering ceases.
A dangerous calm.
The protest is over.
The body accepts the terms of surrender.
Apathy descends, a soft, grey blanket.
The mountaineer sits down in the snowdrift.
The sailor from April 1912 lets go of the wreckage.
He notes, with mild interest, the beauty of the stars.

And then, the final, cruelest trick.
A message from the panicked hypothalamus: a fiction.
A sudden, blooming warmth spreads to the limbs.
A fever dream in the ice.
This wet wool sweater... it's suffocating.
He must take it off.
And that closet, under the stairs... that looks like a safe place to rest.
A burrow.
Just for a moment.

This is the slow cold.
Le froid lent.
Not a sudden shock, but a delusion.
The mercury descends, one deliberate step at a time.
The core releases its warmth, a final, foolish act of charity.

Horace B. VanValkenburg documents the phenomenon.
He calls it paradoxical.
We call it physiology.
The final reading: twenty-eight degrees.
The instrument is no longer needed.
The observation is complete.