This Great and Lonely Space
"Not just beautiful though- The stars are like trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me."
Its draws you, the white, the still, the night. And you follow it, follow it outside, down the street, past cozy little houses that bellow pine smoke from their chimneys and cars that trug down the road. Stop at a little bench to breathe it in, watch it swirl before the yellow street lamps. The longer you sit there, the quieter the world gets as a blanket settles across the houses and around the street corners. It envelops the city and soon you too. You become a statue, lost in the white. You are mother nature herself, watching her work unfold before your eyes. Drifts settle in the hollows of your collar bones, the folds of your coat, on top of your eye lashes making the world sparkle when you blink. You can feel yourself getting colder, your body becoming part of the night. You fade. Your breath no longer hangs like a cloud in the air. Perhaps you have stopped breathing entirely. You have become a part of the playground in front of you, just a sculpture carved in white against the night. Nothing has disturbed you, nothing will disturb you. It is like the world has stopped, no movement but the snowflakes that dance in front of your eyes and fill in your tracks until no one can tell that a person even walked your direction. It tucks itself around your body, soft as a blanket, tiny flakes of down that pillow your head. Winter’s bed calls you to sleep. But sleep you must not. You try to pull yourself away, your body has become part of the snow. You are a living snowman rising from the drifts. Limbs are slow to respond, feet uncertain on the ground. Winter laps at your mind. Stumble through the door to home, snow still clinging to your jacket. Climb the stairs to your apartment, feel the ice melt from your limbs. Your breath is loud and rusty from disuse. You are melting, water dripping off your nose and rolling down your boots. With each step you become more human, winter finally relinquishing its hold on you. By the time you make it home, you are just water and ragged breaths. Your clothes leave a trail from the door to you bed, to blankets not made of ice or pillows of snow. Curled in your bed you are fully human, pink and raw and warm. And to your bed, you surrender.
(Source: sundaymorningchange)
