My Ideal Boyfriend Is a Two-Sport Athlete

Colette Arrand

I’m looking at a picture of a bearded man

superimposed against a mountain. He is not

on the mountain, but it’s the idea of him

in the snow that I like, wearing a mock turtleneck

and freezing to death. I’ll find him preserved

with a bag of trail mix and a well-seasoned pan

and will thaw him out like you would

were you the caretaker of a vault of kept heads.

A renegade cryonicist has no concern

for the way a revived brain is never the same

as it was, the way a person can change.

I can feed him a new name. I can put him

in the cavity of a warm animal for safekeeping.

When he wakes, he can wax his beard

like a gleaming board upon an uncertain sea,

a void appreciated for beauty and fascination.

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