Her heart is so warm that it burns me. But I develop tough skin as a daughter; I learn that flinching will only leave me alone in the cold. I learn to melt, to feel the molecules at the edges become excited and lose shape. I become malleable at the ends, and then eventually in the middle. 

He protects his heart with the cold. Sometimes I glimpse a glow underneath layers of organs and skin but his armour is of solid ice; I crystallise when I hold him too close so that I am gooey in the middle and freezer-burnt on the outside. 

The hot and cold imprints of their hands evaporate off my back as I stand at the gates. I see in ultraviolet. Other kids have to squint against the brim of their school hats and slather on sunscreen. I see in X-rays. They put me in lead uniforms and keep me in concrete rooms. I see in infrared. Most people blend into the icy background, black and blue, but there are a few spots of yellow, orange, and fiery magenta. My cold hands are warmed again, and we huddle together. 

There is also a him. It is hard to find a him that burns with the energy that I specifically consume, but I find him. He makes me pull away from familiar arms into the biting cold, to have a chance at feeling his heat flow from his fingertips to mine.  

I dive into the universe, and I dare to ask, to expect that I will see endless periodic summers as the Earth turns through its seasons. But the exothermic reaction is reaching a new equilibrium. It seems the heat is dissolving, eaten away by slowing atoms in the dark sky.  

The ones I love vanish; they shrink into white dwarves or blow their last breath in a burst of supernovae. I frantically absorb as much warmth as I can, sustaining the flickers of my first loves to my last, until I am the only star in the sky, spewing microwaves and solar rays into the cold.  

I know that the darkness will be hungrier than I ever will be. I pause to consider: will I deflate into a brown dwarf and watch in silence, or implode into a supermassive black hole, roaming the universe forevermore for leftover pieces of energy? Either way, it will end in ice, not fire. 

*** 

It is a well-known fact about the universe that energy is a finite resource. We are in a momentary period of blazing stars before the cold darkness consumes all. It is the truth of eventual entropy.