Make It Last Forever

As I lay back on the bed in complete darkness, I can feel the weather shifting across the landscape even before I see the tiny glittering crystals spinning just outside my window. There is a moon carved out behind a swath of aimless clouds. Save for my steady breathing, I lie naked beneath multiple blankets and do not move. I listen to the careful sound of midnight snow falling gentle on my January heart. Each cold milky orb a universe descending into miles and miles of smooth snow-covered hills. My mind reaches back to the day years ago, you had extended a warm hand to me to hold and I took it eagerly, taken aback by your vulnerability. Your openness, willingness, selflessness. The way with your entire being you seemed to let the world in, sure you could change it, sure you could make things better. Unafraid. Your words, half broken with sincerity, became the touch which carried me home. Home is not a place you can pin on a map; home is the distance between lost and found. In my awed and mild shock, my sort of sad surprise, my eyes follow your tender movements with marked attention not out of fear but out of deep admiration mixed with a kind of morbid curiosity. So exquisite are you, so wind blown and angelic in a golden morning glow. Never would I ever have deserved you. How rarely I allowed for that kind of connection, a stranger’s soft palm to cup itself against the fragility of the rawness in my life. For all the screaming voices which stalk a frightened mind on any given day, the kind of trust which can soothe a trembling body and soul can only be born of silence. I do not remember words, only sensations, only safety. Thin wing, trapped clear and bright in the ice of memory. I can see your face as if before me. So vivid is this dream, this echoed presence of the ghost of you. Heavy snow drifts begin their climb against the side of the house. All the past has now gone quiet. Winter, watching with white eyes as I sleep.