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The form of "Cryoscope" is borrowed from a freezing point depression graph, and the poem is one of a series of "--scope" elegies that each use a medical or other form of instrument to advance the lover, suspended in time by death, into a new frame of imagery and empathy. When we describe a romantic relationship as being "solid," we're usually thinking of the strength of its bonds, not the temperature of that relationship. I was interested in tracking that contradiction within a relationship cooling and yet somehow strengthening through an emotional test—a sort of necessary, yet traumatic learning and unlearning.