Poetry by Christina Hennemann

               ​Martin Cathrae CC



Burnt Cookies in Cold Hands 

This froze up winter lake is a glossy mirror, 
Covered in fairy-tale frost. We stand breathing,
Forming foggy clouds. You resemble familiarity, 
The pleasant pulsing of stiff blue fingers, 
The stinging hot needles in my chest. 

There once was a cosy crackling fire
And the smell of hot chocolate, home -
made vanilla cookies, crumbled and crunchy.
Merely a pale memory, but my nose remembers. 

I smell childhood on your neck; home behind your ears. 

The wondrous scent of the past is ghostly,
Uncannily lovely, ghastly, my pupils widened,
My limbic system recalls the raging icy aftermath.

Those horse legs of mine start running wildly,
Into the fierce, biting cold, onto the frosty lake.

For a minute I am steady, light, sliding on the ice,
Safely and elegant, briefly in balance. 
Your pallid blue eyes pierce me from the lakeshore - 
I hear the ice break, crack, crumble beneath me. 

Will I turn into a frosty mermaid, or cross the distance 
To your snuggly paws, expecting me to fight, flee
The sweet sugary horrors and dreams,
Of hot chocolate and vanilla cookies? 

The scent makes me dizzy – 
I’m soaring in a vacuum of nothingness,
Not yet destined nor damned.

​

Christina Hennemann is a writer and photographer based in the West of Ireland but originally from Germany. At the age of six, she began writing her first English songs and poems with the help of a German-English dictionary. Since then, her passion for writing has only become stronger. Her work has appeared in The Sunshine Review, orangepeel, Maythorn Magazine and elsewhere. Christina loves writing about the subconscious mind, trauma, the healing power of nature and spirituality, relationships and the anxiety that comes with them. Her photographs capture natural beauty, and random (un)belonging details. Find her on Instagram: @c.h_92

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