It's Still Life

12 of 27 – Frostwrit – The Poem – Affection Behind a Locked Jaw
A liturgy in six verses

I.
The Invocation of Knitted Brows
A grandmother’s voice stitches the air—
a grey thread pulled tight between fear and fury.
The hen’s feathers are not snow.
They are the first frost,
and the girl is learning to walk on ice.

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II.
The Hiss of the Unsaid
A truth too heavy for daylight,
so it lives in the dust,
in the wheezing egg song,
in the grandmother’s snapped laugh—
a door cracked open,
just wide enough for love to slip through
sideways.

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III.
The Rafters’ Witness
Felreil watches, half-shadow, half-patience,
as the egg is lifted—
not stolen, translated.
This is how secrets are passed:
in the space between a hen’s rage
and a grandmother’s habitual hands.
(The Book of 27 knows this well.
It, too, was written in stolen light.)

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IV.
The Blood on the Shell
A smear like a failed signature.
The girl does not drop it.
She holds the egg as she will one day hold
her own heart—
terrified,
precise,
and very, very still.

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V.
The Lesson Unfolding
Later, she will understand:
Softness is not the absence of teeth.
It is the refusal to bite back.

Every woman she loves carries this—
a Frostwrit scripture:
“Affection behind a locked jaw,
hands steady as theft,
no time for tears.”

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VI.
The Benediction of the Henhouse
Let the dust settle.
Let the feathers cling.
Let the girl remember:
Violence and tenderness
are born from the same hot dark.

The difference is
what you choose to carry,
and how carefully
you wipe away the blood.

The hen clucks.
The grandmother nods.
Felreil licks the ink from his fingers.

The Book adds a new glyph:
an egg, a drop of blood,
and a jaw clenched
around the word love.

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