Winter of Footprints

    I might as well do it. He thought. There's nothing left for me here. In a winter as cold as this surely death cannot be colder. I already feel life weeping from my bones. This external exhaustion suckling at the very blood of my body. As if my life force is being siphoned away into a dark unknown, forever to be lost.

    He grudgingly stood from his seat upon his wooden chair and placed his mug on his windowsill, glancing out the window at the funereal formulating clouds and the penitent rain. Weariness had overcome him and he densely slunk onto his bed. The winter had been bleak, it had left footprints in the snow. Grey clouds roamed the skies, ronin marauders spreading the blight of a dismal glow across the dirt and stone. A lucent brume shadowing the faces of people with a sullen matte brushstroke, embellishing shady features and adding a gloomy overtone to all. Still a man was yet to be seen on the streets, among tenfold of his fellows, with a genuine grin, the kind that seem to radiate and infect, especially to the grim. Unless the grim are so wayward into their woes that this virulent cheer causes the resentment towards the bearer of the dastardly mirth, but still, this is not the instance in which we are present. No, in dreary days such as this a man housing hellish delight may not subsist. It seems happiness itself has been suffocated by the malevolent fog that plagues the heavens. And no light can be shed on the cold, this ethereal freeze that stiffens trees and fingers alike, a cold that nips at the leaves of saplings, or absence of such pleasantries in barren lands. And the gnawing frost that seeps into one's bones and bites at the nose, as if you could smell the very breath of a raving ice-hellion. clawing at white knuckles until at last the cheating reward of artificial bricked in heat. After all this and still more, we persevere. Accepting simple pleasures such as a warm mug of tea. Tea. Hot water and herbs. Simple, yes, but a pleasure none-the-less. Yes if there is one thing worth winter and its polar temper, it is, after being blown through the mud and the muck, after wind pierces your heart and shreds your apparel, a mug of balmy, mellow tea. And if you have view of a wintry, windswept landscape. Well. But alas this moment ceased to exist, in a winter such as this. Truly it is, the simple bliss in life that constitutes both our hardy impediment and our tender contentment, for the night is darkest before the dawn, no matter how indefinite the dawn may be.

    He shuffled on his bed and unhitched his thoughts. He laid in infinite creation amidst an endless canvas of black and still he felt boundaries. A chain around the nape of his visions. Staring, figuratively, into the black, he thought of nothing. He thought of how nothing can exist. He thought of how nothing can't exist without something. And finally, he thought of nothing. Ages seemed to have passed when he woke, but he found his clock had retired, although the hands still beat like a heart for they said not minutes had past since he drifted into the other world. Sleep, it seems, had evaded him. But this was the game indicative of all desires. And so he laid it to rest, but still pondered the comfort of sleep without arousal. Sleep, it is so desirable, but what is it that makes sleep so alluring? As with the night and the dawn, it is the wakening that causes so much comfort. And so at last, he sat in his chair and thought fiercely, a final decision. He glared at the bricked wall in his room as if he could blow it away with a torrent of emotion. He thought and stared. And thought and stared, trying to decide whether to remain in the room or venture beyond the old bricked wall. The wall began to envelope his vision, surging and pulsating, soon looming over him, commanding his attention and he felt himself lowering deep into a tunnel as his sight furrowed at the frame. Then his weight seemed to double, his bones becoming twice as heavy and he now almost struggled to remain upright. But in the gloom of the immediate episode he lifted his sunken skull and gazed out his window where snowflakes fluttered down, softer than the hands of a dearly missed loved one. Then he knew. He had made his decision and he picked up his mug of balmy, mellow tea and leaned in close with his nose nearly touching the frosty glass and said, "There is still beauty in this world that I have yet to see." And with his choice he stood from his chair and left the room, wandering into the kitchen.

    "Are y'here for supper?" Asked his Mother, as she stood in a modest elegance before the stove, brewing a beef mush stew.

    "Yes. I dare say I am." He said in quiet, honest boastfulness.

    "Good! I'll be damned if we waste any of this stew, 't's good beef and potatoes in it!"

    His mother went on about the succulence of the good beef, and the days events as well as the advantage of good friends and the benefits that accompany them, such as a discount on beef and potatoes. But throughout all this she couldn't possibly conceive the degree of importance in that decision he had made, then and there, and he would never enlighten her of the significance of the answer given to her.