I walk through my own personal cloud of crystalline breath. The nighttime is silent but for the thuds of snow falling from branches. The modern world disappears, and even the family van is a slumbering dragon. I pace the silent woods, twilight falling to full dark quickly.

ice chokes the pond
water reflects the dark sky
even my breath stills

I return to a long-ago winter. Lacy snowflakes fall all night. School is cancelled. Frost stars seal the window glass. I don three layers of clothes before pushing through drifts over my head. I forge new pathways. I enter an icy, secret world with caves, trolls, mountains and a snow queen.

hiding from monsters
across alien frozen worlds
in the quiet, is me

Copyright 2015 Brenda Davis Harsham

Note: This is a haibun, a Japanese form of writing, alternating prose and poetry, in this case, haiku. It has many rules. It should be present tense. The haiku should be without punctuation, except where a stop is indicated by a comma. Basho made this form famous.