Reflecting.

A year ago today:

I dreamt of you last night.

High on a spire against the monochrome of endless winter, ice frenzied against exposed skin, a thousand needles given malicious life by the wind. There was panic in your eyes, and something more: something darker, a secret exhaustion, an unmouthed prayer to be let go and a deeper impulse to hold tighter. Your face a few feet from mine, the weight of the world beneath you, pulling.

From my numbed grip your arms began to slide, and in an agonizing fraction of a second, an infinite split between one heartbeat and the next, I felt the rush of sensation that was your hands along my wrists, past my palms, through my fingers. Suspended beneath the wind-wracked precipice, hovering, almost serenely against that impenetrable grey, almost at peace if not for the cry that could not escape your throat --

And then you were gone. Swallowed by the sky.

Arms outstretched and chest heaving against the snow, the howl of the wind retreated; there was only me, the mountain, silence. And it ran through me like water, cold and empty.

I dreamt of you last night.

High on a spire against the monochrome of endless winter, ice frenzied against exposed skin, a thousand needles given malicious life by the wind. There was panic in your eyes, and something more: something darker, a secret exhaustion, an unmouthed prayer to be let go and a deeper impulse to hold tighter. Your face a few feet from mine, the weight of the world beneath you, pulling.

From my numbed grip your arms began to slide, and in an agonizing fraction of a second, an infinite split between one heartbeat and the next, I felt the rush of sensation that was your hands along my wrists, past my palms, through my fingers. Suspended beneath the wind-wracked precipice, hovering, almost serenely against that impenetrable grey, almost at peace if not for the cry that could not escape your throat --

And then you were gone. Swallowed by the sky.

Arms outstretched and chest heaving against the snow, the howl of the wind retreated; there was only me, the mountain, silence. And it ran through me like water, cold and empty.