Thursday, November 3, 2011

Come Winter Rewrite

It’s very cold

The endless Winter surrounds her as her moth bitten ash coat keeps her clothed, but never warm. The key to her survival lies within her frozen entirety: the icicles driven through her heart. These bloodless sacrifices keep her from needing warmth because the chill is already within her. There’s no defeat for there is no pain, only numbness
She walks from home to home to beg, absorbing those few sporadic bursts of warmth. She feels treated with human compassion just as rarely. Doors open for short period until they see what has come. One short blast of body warming heat later and they shut the door
It’s ok though. Empathy is not something that she expected, but those memories of the fleeting warmth cling to her. They intrigue her, embrace her, and give her reasons to keep walking forward.
Every once in awhile, someone wavers on indecision and their door remains open for longer than expected. In those bittersweet times, heat surrounds her being, letting her imagine what being completely warm might feel like. At those times, the icicles within her reveal their curse as they begin to thaw.
Pain suddenly pierces through her enjoyment of the freeing warmth and her numbness begins to drains away.
But it’s ok. She doesn’t expect friendliness for too long. She never hopes for her heart to truly heal by finding a safe and permanent place that would give her time to fully thaw completely. She doesn’t believe in the outside help that would be needed to stitch the fully thawed ripping remains of what froze her. Her faith is as cold as the rest of her
So she fed on the fleeting heat, never believing that she could want for more.
One night she knocked on a door. It was a door that wasn’t different from any of the others she’s knocked on. When he eased the door open, wondering who could bear to be in this bitter environment, he looked upon her and stared in shock and horror. Although she was used to horror at her image, she had never seen a compassionate expression like this be for her ice covered and thoroughly chilled self. She stared at him, dazed by his sympathy. She stumbled with shock when he ushered her inside his home. She stood in the hall awkwardly and he guided her to his fireplace, gathering blankets around her.


She warned him that her cold went deep and her pain once thawed would need a great amount of attention and care. That she could die if his warmth unfroze too much of her only to be kicked back into the cold.
They talked as she began to reveal her inner scars and he wasn’t frightened away. Even though he never said the words, he seemed to indicate that he would sing her into sleep and patch her scars. So, she fell asleep to his voice filled with promise.
She thawed. Her numbness gave way as the deep scars within her chest opened fresh and bleeding from the warmth around her. At first, he tended to her while she was sleeping but the scars were deep and so much more serious than he could ever have expected. The pain that should have awakened her was blocked by her belief that she had found somewhere safe and that she was going to be ok. She bled.
She woke from her slumber with bone quaking shivers and searing hot pains coming from within her. She realized she was outside again, the winter now even colder because her wounds suffered the agony of being open to the air.
She tried to move on like she had previously, home to home but never staying long. However, her heart wouldn’t heal and the blood kept the icicles that would have given her familiar relief from forming again. More and more she bled as she tried to keep going. She wasn’t ok anymore
Finally, she collapsed into the snow. Strangers walked by promising that eventually she would get help but she only lay dying, regretful of the false hope that had gotten her here. As she sunk further into the snow, she was filled with a dread that told her


“You’ll never be ok again”