Hand of Ice

A cold icy hand penetrates your skin
White as death
Bones as visible as the thick blue veins
Scrawling like spider-webs
beneath a translucent skin.

A slight, sickening, pulsating movement
in the stick-like wrist
indicates a sad and withering life,
not the hand of death
but the hand of misery.

It grasps your heart,
the hard, frozen bones caressing
the warm muscle,
chilling it,
Filling it with sorrow and despair.

The beating slows to a monotonous drone,
A lifeless tick
resounding alone
in a body once warm.