Sweet October Revelations.

I am so, so, so cold. Covered in snow and ice; it hangs from my very fingers as I twirl circles in the dusty whiteness before my face. So cold. My breath seems to freeze before it even enters my lungs. It’s almost as if I really cannot breathe. All that there is left to do is obey my instincts. Stay alive. Ignore what I think and continue with what must be done—breathe in, breathe out, wiggle your toes before they drop off, even inside these fuzzy faux-leather boots. Keep living, let the seconds tick onward, even when you know you’re not truly alive.

A shadow appears within the whiteness—still distant, but existential enough to squint my eyes at and watch. Something is coming; too large to be simply an animal, simply hunting like me. It cannot even pretend to hide its humanity. I look away. My pattern continues, and I continue in my pattern. Always. Footsteps crunch louder and louder across the icy emptiness. The echoes should hurt my pounding eardrums, but all I feel is bitter numbness. I cannot feel. I am closed up tight and shut off from the world; refusal. Simple as that.

No voice, simply presence. You. I shall acknowledge your presence; you are you. My eyes squint shut as I sigh, rattling out an exhalation so cold that it almost makes you wince away. It takes a lot of effort to pick me up and put me on my feet, but you’re strong, and much bigger than my insectine body; after a few unsteady lurches, I am shaking next to you instead of on the ground. This is the first time that I’ve ever been truly exposed to the brightness of the snow. I can barely see anything, and I have no vision of you whatsoever. You are just a shadow in the cold. Like me, right?

After a minute of standing and squinting at each other, you begin to walk. I follow you in blind apathy, tripping and stumbling over blunt, snow-shrouded obstacles that litter my path but continuing all the same. Our walk seems to be quite long, but the day is never-ending and nothing compells you to stop or even slow your pace. Chilliness itself crackles underneath our feet, but I no longer feel it nibbling my face. Eventually, your body manages to tamp down a trail on which I can tread; the journey becomes just a little bit easier. I follow. You lead on.

Time stretches out, and I start to notice that you’re not as heavily equipped for the wintertime as I am. My scarf is itchy. I remove it and let it trail behind us for a few minutes before finally releasing it into the wind; however, my neck is not cold. Walking over such a distance has helped me to regain some feeling; my fingers hurt now, and I know that my toes will be quick to follow. My gait turns to a trot. You vaguely acknowledge that I’m finally keeping up, but little else changes. The wind howls without forgiveness.

All of a sudden, you stop and turn to me. I take the chance to shake the icy sludge off of my boots and run my gloved fingers through my soaking-wet hair. You smirk, revealing only a tiny crinkle of a mouth, and yank off my gloves and hat. I assume that I won’t be needing them anymore, but I do not know—you lead the expedition. Whatever happens shall happen.

We begin to walk once again. I rub my hands together in an attempt at warming them up, but the snow is no longer falling in an icy blizzard as it was before—it’s coming down in fat, clingy flakes, showering upon us from a thick blanket of clouds. We start to climb uphill, to my surprise, and I struggle to pull my aching muscles up the slope that we’re now ascending. You reach out a hand to me when we get to a more difficult part, and I almost enjoy the smooth, velvety feel of your firm skin. Finally, we reach the top of our obstacle.

The incessant snowfall sprinkles itself into oblivion, and above us, the cloudy sky brightens but does not clear. I shuffle a bit closer to you, but before I really have any idea what’s going on, you’re pulling me at full speed down the other side of the hill. I laugh, slipping on puddles of mud and tranquil ice sheets, but it’s a vain and empty expression. I am more afraid than having fun. One of my gloves is torn free from my hand by a branch jutting out from the frozen wasteland, but there’s no way to go back for it; soon the other is lost as well. When we finally reach the bottom, we’re both out of breath—and I can almost see your face.

One eye. My vision is returning as the snow dims and the sky grows lighter; I can make out the distinct shape of your very spirit in this one gaze. Not terribly wide open, but watching, observing, so terribly good at seeing. I shudder.

You lead on. Around us, the snow is starting to turn to gushy water, and it makes horribly icky noises under my soaking feet. The sticky texture of the air forces me to remove my enormous winter coat and cast it off, and you sneer at its silhouette while it falls away from our background. Your probing fingers can poke at me now, and they do; I wince away in irritation but continue to walk with you. I lose one boot and then another in the mud, but I don’t mind being barefooted.

This is like time travel on a foreign planet, but I enjoy it all the same as slender shreds of grass start to poke out from the underground. I smile at them; you start to dance. Soon, we’re traveling between erupting flowers and rapidly rising trees, their blooms filling the air with a soft scent while the sky clears and turns to a brilliant blue. The sun is cool but bright, and I let my hand slide comfortably into yours.

Gorgeous flowers begin to turn to fruit as we frolic and skip and sing together, enjoying this lifetime with a warm remembrance of days much worse. I abandon the fleece jacket I’m wearing. This is much nicer weather. You stop me underneath a tree heavily laden with Red Delicious apples, and your arms wrap unexpectedly around my waist. I pull you closer, to my own surprise, and our mouths meet. Your flavor is nice; saliva and freckles and skin and dominance and maybe a little bit of apples and red velvet cake too. My fingers clutch at the back of your head; I don’t want this to go away even though I’m more or less hyperventilating from pure bliss. And with that we’re done. Out of breath. But this can only get better, right?

I do not know. You wrap your hand around mine once more, and we march on, side by side, our skin now so acquainted that I barely revel at your touch. The greenness of our world amazes me; I stop every few paces to point out a new tree, bush, vine, or late-blooming rose that peeks out from the sun-beaten landscape. The rest of the flowers have withered away, and we feed each other with swollen fruits as we pass between orchards of perfection and gardens of birdsong. Your clearly visible face is red from sun; so red, in fact, that your features are starting to fade away into the brilliant color. I push my worries aside.

You lead me across a slender creek, our bare feet splashing in the refreshingly cool water. Over our heads, the trees have shed their fruits, and the leaves are beginning to change, turning first yellow, and then, as we continue, red and orange and occasionally a brittle brown. They filter the sunlight into a fantastic kaleidoscope of colors, twisting and turning and casting brilliant shadows across your burnt face. I kiss you again, of my own will this time, and feel you desperately struggling to clutch my fragile body in the cool fortress of your arms.

The leaves fall. I dance once more, but you watch me rather than joining in, a hesitant smile on your conflicted face. Crunch, crunch, crunch whisper the leaves, and I sing with the rattling of the cool wind. It’s a shock, since I’m now wearing little more than undergarments, but I still have you to hold and love and stick with. But you don’t smile when the wind chills and the leaves start to turn brown and soggy; in fact, you look pained when I run to you to hide from the cold. Your footsteps are growing quicker, as if you’re afraid to pass through this October land. I tug on your hand and widen my eyes, begging for you to stay with me and enjoy our closeness in this enchanted autumn. You move on.

Wind shatters my bones, my skin, your still-sunburnt cheeks, and now I’m clutching your arm, your hand, your fingertips. The ground beneath me is no longer soggy with leaves but slick with ice. Grim light shines in your once-sparkling eyes; you are determined, but I am tripped up by mounds of frost and dying, withering, fading branches that encroach upon us from all sides. They slowly retreat into the distance, leaving us in a land whipped by bitter, tiny snowflakes and painful gales. Your lips plant a sorrowful kiss on the tips of my fingernails, and you look me in the eyes, tearfully, conflicted. A lump rises in my throat, and I trip on a rising mound of snow, my hand slipping from yours momentarily.

It’s as if a dragon has come to life in my belly and started to rip me apart—your eyes snap from caring to unconscious, clueless, almost cruel. You watch my barely clothed body as it’s swathed in bitterly cold snow, but not once do you extend your hand to help me, no matter how desperately I struggle to crawl in your direction.

I feel as if I’m about to throw up the ghosts of the cherries and apples and sweetly tart blackberries that we shared so soon before. The air is so cold that it’s nibbling at my skin, turning me a nasty shade of blue, but you’re still red with burn, every inch of you, and fading quickly into a shadow as the snow billows between us. You don’t want me anymore; you’re continuing, leaving me to freeze myself into oblivion. Your dim shape turns darker and then lighter once more, an outline in the frost that seizes my lungs and shrivels my wanton limbs. And the snow, the cold, the loneliness greet me with open arms, now that I’ve succumbed to their world.

I am so, so, so cold.