Remembering Winter

This piece is about loss. It is about love and adoration, but most importantly that thing we all seem to fear: losing the ones we love. Fiction.

                It must have been the sun that woke her, for a pale strand shone through the blinds and rested across her face, turning the darkness beneath her eyelids to a warm red. By the time she had sat up to stretch, more light had filled the room and beckoned her out of bed. Cold stung her toes as the hardwood met them and she sauntered to the window to look listlessly out onto the cold March morning. It was snowing, which wasn’t particularly odd she supposed, but it fretted her heart with certain melancholy. Snow reminded her of him. Every time she saw the flakes flurrying in the wind her mind flashed with images of each crystal sticking to his eyelashes that rimmed the warm brown eyes that warmed her, his lean body retreating into the white whirlwind. Reaching forward, her fingers touched the frigid glass panes, leaving marks where warm met cold. She smiled, though it was sad, bittersweet. Wasn’t love always bittersweet? Memories are a miracle in their own way. They can take you anywhere you once were, in a split second. And within those frames of time you can re-experience sweet things, hopeful things, painful things… The only problem is you can never go back. Memories let you relive the past, sure enough, but what good is living in the past? Then your memories of the present are naught but memories of memories. A small smile drew up the edges of her lips. Although she realized then that she didn’t want to, she let herself fall back into the past, for just a moment, just one quick indulgence; as it always was…

When she stood where she had been on a snowy day countless years before, she was seeing it from without and within; as if she flashed between being a part of the scenery, looking on, and within her body, watching him. There was no sound, there was never sound. But she could see his lips moving, breathing life into beautiful words that always made the world more hopeful. Hand-in-hand he talked and swayed gracefully through the snowdrifts. Houses stood guard on one side of them, some distance away, as the skeletons of once blooming trees haunted them with their beauty on the other side. After what seemed to be an endless amount of time of them laughing as they walked, they stopped. They had come to the edge of the lake now and he looked over the frozen expanse and smiled. She had always wondered why. She had always presumed that he had a greater understanding of the beauty of this world than she. But it didn’t matter, because when he smiled, she couldn’t help but smile; a careless smile that spread over both faces, within and without.

She found herself back in her room, surrounded by dull wooden furniture. On one peg was her faded robe that she tossed off the hook and pulled tightly around her, taking some of the harsh breath of the room off of her. The house was quiet, as it had been for many mornings. Downstairs was a table for one pushed against a corner in the kitchen in addition to sparse adornments of the small, creaking house. Her routine cup of morning tea steamed in the kitchen and the ticking of the clock in the distance made her feel small. As she looked into the depths of the teacup she saw spring. Great thick oaks swaying in a warm breeze, leaves dancing under the azure skies, a cloud pulling in front of the sun for brief intervals; she would look up and shield her eyes from the brightness. Suddenly, the sweet fragrance of  a sunflower plucked fresh from the stalk. She always scolded him for picking them, as her mother had scolded her, but they were her favorite. She would laugh her awkward, insecure laugh and blush a deep burgundy as she took it and was too embarrassed to make eye contact. But she always felt his laughing eyes flickering around her face, and occasionally she would peek up to steal a glance and suddenly the sun seemed to feel hotter and heavier. Spring faded into a long, lazy summer that spilled across her dreams and into fall in which everything began to die. The leaves spiraled from the trees and the air cooled, but never her admiration. She paused at the end of autumn and refused to let her memories slip any further. It had been winter when it happened. But she didn’t want to think of that now, or ever. The thing about reliving your memories is that sometimes they take you to places you never intended to go. She never intended to go there again.

Winter wasn’t just bitter and cold, it was painful. The white blanket covering the land flashed into the white walls, the white sheets, his white skin… So pale, so cold; the once red lips a colorless line, the once bright eyes glazed. Brunet locks had been lost, replaced by bareness. When his last breath had slid away so had the sunshine in her life, the warmth in her soul.

The pain caused her to crumble into herself, to curl her knees into her chest as it heaved in heavy sobs. Somehow she found her head on the table, staring out into the snow, where she glimpsed through the white whirlwind two children chasing one another, their mother waiting patiently at the window for them to come inside when they were through. Another tear slid down her cheek and salted her lips, which tightened into a weary smile.

Author's Note

Trying to convey some basic human emotions such as nostalgia, loss, fear, love. I tried to keep the details sparse because I tend to go overboard with detail. Just wrote this on a whim letting emotions guide me. Please tell me what you think. Constructive criticisms highly appreciated.

Reviews

[zainul]

Captivating story.
Presented a sad story from memory so perfectly!:)
Correctly said,"Memories are a miracle in their own way. They can take you anywhere you once were, in a split second."
Very good write.