Winter

"The whole world is a narrow bridge; the important thing is not to be afraid."

Sometimes fortune cookies can give decent advice.

The cold was bearable because my thoughts were consumed with warmth. Wooden planks supporting lazy admiration. I walk by them sometimes, and sometimes there's a momentary unsettling feeling. I don't want to be entangled in your tourniquet and feel inclined to speak in monosyllables. I want to feel the railing in my grip, leaning far over the bridge. While watching cars pass by frantically, I thought it wasn't right. I thought that it wouldn't last much longer and that I would have to walk away. The attachment was never very consistently congruent, though I'm not sure you were even aware. There were times that I practiced my speech aloud in front of my reflection, but then I would imagine the surprise in your eyebrows and frown in your lips. I'm not prepared to go on like this. Nothing that is impermanent is perfect, but, do you miss the snow? Do you miss the warmth in the cold? There are things I'd do differently, and maybe you would be one of them, I can't tell for sure. Perhaps this is arbitrary and a course of bad judgment, seeing as how his flower in my hair, a nickname in his voice and his arms wrapped around my back ought to convince me that memories are better left alone, shoved in the blue box beneath my bed with all the others. And lying there under the shade of the tree on a sunny afternoon in early summertime, across from young love and next to an eager affection, musing lyrical bliss, I feel at ease. I feel complete and content. I don't think of the cold, I think of the rope hanging quietly on the branch above me. It's odd, this mixture of conflicting sentiments.