Cold Worlds


The wind cuts through my eyes and tears stream down my face; that same wind freezes a crust of salt onto my cheeks. I don't even flinch when a car passes me too close, window rolled down so the driver can lean over and yell "FUCK YOU" at me. I no longer bother expending the energy getting angry at motorists. It's too easy to get angry at motorists.

Inhale with your nose, exhale with your mouth; it's the old rule I still live by from high school winter track practice. The tissue is tinged pink from broken nasal capillaries. I am terrified every time I set a foot on the newly constructed porch steps, its posts encased with ice. I have already forgotten how rickety the old ones were after the drunk old woman who used to live downstairs backed into it twice a day for a decade.

The snow drifts down ceaselessly and I cannot help but smile whenever the wind penetrates through my clothing and chaps my skin. It has been years since I've felt such a satisfyingly pervasive cold; I miss the long, relentless Midwest winters of my childhood. I miss the allure of an ambiguous open snowfield, the world silent as if the planet was holding its breath. I miss the inky black skies that blend with the forking tree skeletons cracking the surface of those glowing white plains while the moon pushes sunlight back to us. We are never far from the sun so long as the moon hangs fat and full in crisp glass skies.

It's been a long time since I've felt that love.

25 January 2014 21:28


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