Red in the winter

After hours of wandering, hopelessly lost in the forest’s early morning, he thought it best to rest. For the marked time, he built up a fire—small, but a great reprieve in the vast cold. Thereby he sat, holding the hands well nigh in the flames. After a tide he let it die down and set a tin cup filled with snow into the coals. He was lost, but not without tea.

 

From the jacket he withdrew his red, leather bound journal and slowly ran the fingers over the streaming, vein-like crinkles in its surface. He flipped it open and began to write new words therein.

 

It’s winter now, but all of my thoughts are on the coming spring.

 

After stones and stones have fallen, the snow will rise up to the earth shadowing clouds—whence it came. Thereafter will life too rise up from its seasonal slumber. There will be new mothers and children. There will be deep greens and pink squinting eyes. Life will bloom.

 

Too weak to withstand the winter winds, some will die, and the allmother will call them back—whence they came.

 

And so winter is a time to keenly gaze within. I look inside myself and ask what lies therein: will i—too? Will i run strongly beneath the spring’s white and blue, and among its green? Will i stumble into black, unseen?

 

His watery eyes fell down and starred at the nigh empty cup resting in the lap. He raised the tin to the lips and tipped the head back. The last—now cold—drops of tea trickled into the mouth. He set the cup on ground beside him and wondered about the words.

 

Suddenly, breaking the flow of anxious thoughts, he rubbed the eyes, breathed quickly in, then out, and determinedly stood up. He stowed away the journal and kicked the coals around, killing what of the fire lingered.

 

Therefrom he went, and each step he walked was made with the sureness of a stone. He wayfared the span of hundreds of tree lengths, finally stopping where the trees were not—a frozen lake.

 

He stood at the edge of the rotting, wooden dock, which bravely stuck itself deeply into the fog. He pulled the journal again from the jacket and threw it into the snow that blanketed the ice. The deep red sept like blood thereinto. He took off his shoes and slid his feet forward to the edge. The toes curled thereover, squeezing so hard that they unkythed into the cold white below.

 

Swiftly he flailed his arms back, bent the numb knees, and pushed each limb against what it could. Lost no more, he flew into the heavy, gray sky.

 

But here i stand—and i choose to overcome it all. In winter i will not fall.