Entering a New Environment Story - Coldness

Coldness

Her hands were cold.

It was the first thing he had noticed; when she spoke to him, held out her hand, her touch chilled him to the bone.

It was an ice and diamonds thrill, at first.  Her eyes glittered behind wire-framed glasses, skin smooth and so very pale.  She was beautiful; with a kind of faraway beauty, like snow on a distant mountaintop.  They had met in school, and he had almost always walked her home afterwards.  He wanted to get to know her better, as she was a bright, intelligent girl whose true thoughts always remained a mystery.   Her smile was entrancing, she was entrancing; like a snowflake, a shock of cold, a sip of refreshment.  Today, she had invited him inside her house.

The air was dry and empty inside, with a grey cement floor and plain white walls.  Few pieces of furniture were present.  The smell of sterility and hospital lingered about, like it was trying too hard to cover up something else.  The temperature was very low; he could feel the chill all the way to his bones.  He crossed his arms tightly over his chest, trying to get warm.  He was surprised that his breath didn’t fog up when he spoke, “Where is your family?  I should introduce myself.”

“Downstairs…” She smiled wide.  Her teeth were blinding white, gleaming like her glasses.  He found himself staring at the perfect spectrum of her mouth.  There was a large stone fireplace, empty of logs or fire.  Pictures of family and pets, smiling and cheerful, haunted the mantelpiece.  Everything was right, but strangely, wrong.  He didn’t know what it was, but something just seemed entirely off about her house.  She had changed, inside her house.  Something about the way she smiled, licking her lips, something about the way the temperature was so frosty, so chilling.

He was suddenly, very afraid.

Perhaps it was all a misunderstanding---

She approached him, holding her hands behind her back. 

“You’ll just love what I have in store for you,” she whispered.

“Uh, I think I have to go---“

“No, no, stay.”  She smiled again, that below zero degree smile, looming over him, stepping closer.

He heard a rustling sound behind him, sending a chill up his spine. The lights seemed to dim, shadows crept along the walls.

Her smile seemed to stretch wider and wider, and he realized.  The cold was not refreshing.  The cold was not an ice and diamonds thrill.  The cold in her eyes was not beautiful.  She was not a snowflake; she was not delicate or refined.  Her eyes bored into him, glassy and staring, mouth grinning, stretched and stretched.  Her bone white hands were extending towards him, an aching, biting, dead cold.

Her smile was truly too big for her face--- the impossibly wide smile of the truly insane.

Prompt: Innocence - March

Pink

Prompt: Innocence 

I hate the colour pink. 

It’s the colour of her dress, her lips, the ribbons she always wore in her hair.

The sweetness of it, the innocence of it, leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Pink doesn’t suit me. 

It never has.

 She was the innocent one, the pretty one, the fragile one.  I was dirty under the fingernails and she had been surrounded by fine things her entire life.  She was thin and graceful, so sickeningly sweet—giving smiles so easily, while I kept them to myself.

I had hoped, at first, we could be friends.  I’d grown up surrounded by men and boys and never really knew what it was like to have another girl around.  I remember that one dusty afternoon, my father had come home with a girl my age timidly peeking out from behind his legs.  She was wearing a pink dress, lips and cheeks flushed from the cold.  I didn’t think it was unusual at first--- my father had a habit of this. We still called him father even though my brothers and I were all orphans from the street.  He was the only father we’d ever known, the only one who had loved us.  We came from a life of begging and stealing, a life of coldness and hunger, but she was different.  She wore pink and blushed pink and was pretty in a way that reminded me of china dolls, with pale, delicate skin and fine, high cheekbones. 

How she had come to us had always remained a mystery to me.  I only knew that she had been saved from the street, sheltered, luckier than all of us.  I couldn’t help but think it was unfair.  She would never understand me.  I would never understand her.  She was used to playing piano and doing needlepoint and sipping tea with soft hands.  I was rough and skinny and dirty with calluses on my hands.  I came to despise the colour pink.  It was the symbol of her, of the refinement of girlhood, a life I could never have back.

We were very different.  I don’t think father ever wanted to realize that she wasn’t happy with the life we had.  Winters were hard, we barely managed to scrape by and food was always scarce.  We all had to work.  For the rest of us, anything was better than begging on the streets.  But she was forced into a hard life, and it was wrong to me.  She wasn’t like me.  She was like a lovely flower, meant to be protected and pampered, meant for fine things. 

Secretly, I hated her as I hated the colour pink.  I knew she was too fragile to live this life.

I was right.

She was too delicate, and contracted illness.  After much pain, she passed away, much too young.

We buried her with a small ceremony, the best that we could do.  She wore that pink dress in the coffin, lying on her back, broken and small-boned and vulnerable.   Sometimes, I can still see her face; eyes closed, face pale, beautiful, even in death.  She was always smiling, cheerful even in our hardships.  She had entered our bleak world and made it colourful.  She was like a breath of fresh air, a sip of cool water, a little ray of sunshine in a dark and gritty world.

She should have been a princess, because she was special, and innocent; not like me, who’d never known anything except wrestling in the mud.

I just didn’t want to admit it, but the beauty of her, inside and out, made me wish that I could wear pink too; even if only for a moment.

Poem Inspired By Favourite Poems

Poem inspired by First & Last - Amelie Pascual

To the Desert - Benjamin Alire  Sáenz 

It may not always be so; and I say - E.E Cummings

When you are old - W.B Yeats

This is Just to Say - William Carlos Williams

It's been so long

It's been so long, that

I can't remember the way you smile

Or

What shade of blue your eyes were

Not even

The small gestures of your hands, fluttering

Out of the corner of my eye

It's been so long, that

I can't remember the warmth of you

That used to be so

comforting

And sweet

Your laughing face lit golden

By the sun

And even though

It's been so long

I still wish

We could return to those days

Prompt: Anticipation - May

A train that runs all the way out of the town

Prompt: Anticipation

There is a train that runs all the way out of the town and into blue-green mountains and richly coloured fields.  It runs all the way out to big, beautiful lakes, sparkling in the sun.  To lands she can only dream of, hazy in the mist.  Her eyes can follow the train, a sliver of shining metal like a crescent moon, or a silvery teardrop, receding smaller and smaller and smaller until it finally recedes into the unknown she longs for. There is a train that runs all the way out to the cities she’s heard of, with tall, gleaming skyscrapers blocking out the skies. 

Sometimes, she stands at the train station, so close to the crying mothers waving goodbye, so close she can almost feel the excitement and anxiety and freedom all tumbled in with the smell of coal burning and the low rumbles as the train begins to set off.  Sometimes, time passes before her eyes as she stays there, long after the train is gone.

Only one train runs all the way out of the town she lives in.  The town, so small it never makes it on a map.  A town of dusty dirt paths and heavy hearts and deep, endless skies that could swallow you whole, that shine too bright.  She hates the skies.  She hates feeling so vulnerable under them.  Her world is too big, too empty, too cold.  Too lonely.  The winds wrap tight around her in a land flat and plain, with shadows so long in the daytime.

So she dreams of the big cities, teeming with people and artists and musicians on the street, those tall, gleaming skyscrapers blocking out the skies above her.  She dreams of the smiling spectators, the dancing, the drinking, the mass of bodies that she can reinvent herself in.  She wishes for the day that she will be on the train that runs all the way out of the town. 

Until that day comes, she’ll stand at the train station, eyes following the silver of the train, dreaming in anticipation for things that could be.

Prompt: Spring - April

Birds in Her Eyes

Prompt: Dreams

The park bench is cold and lonely in the shade of a weather beaten tree.  Winter has left its mark; the landscape lies frozen in pale sunlight, waiting, always waiting, for the growing strength of spring.

Rain falls slowly, softly, like silver sheets tumbling down and sending ripples on the sidewalks.
A girl with a ribbon in her hair, dressed in a bright yellow raincoat streaks past, laughing.  She chases a little black dog with folded down ears and a mushed up, excited face.

As he watches her go, he is suddenly, painfully reminded of a different place, a different girl--- another time spent waiting for spring.

It was a while ago--- but somehow he still remembers the little details of those days, like the way the sun burned red around the ribbon in her hair, the shape of the shadows on the side of her face.   The feel of the wind, the damp morning dew on grass.  She was always looking up at the sky.  Daydreaming.

She loved this time of year; the wetness of April showers, the flood of the melt water, the small, tentative hands of sunlight and the skies, blue and wide and clear.

Her eyes are blue, too, even bluer than the sky, and sometimes, he swears, he can see birds flying.

------------------

The girl in lemon yellow is tall; not petite, strong; not frail, and she laughs in a carefree way, so completely fearless.  Her eyes are dark, not light.

She's not her--- but he still feels the recognition like a glass shard in his heart.  That ribbon in her hair; so childish, so immature, so delicate….so heart-achingly familiar.

She's not her--- but she is.  She's not the girl he once knew-- but she is.  She has those birds in her eyes.

Sometimes, he gets there before her, and sits on the park bench, waiting.  She always, always comes here, early in the morning.  Her dog barks happily and runs past her, begging to be unleashed.  She laughs, unclips the leash and takes off like a bullet, a streak of bright yellow in the otherwise empty park, a tiny, leaping dog trailing. 

He’s lost count of the years now, of the time spent without her.  He can’t quite remember what her skin felt like, can’t quite remember her touch, really---she’s just a faraway girl standing on the precipice of his dreams, always there, never close enough. He’s just an old man now, tired and cold.  He never really believed he could see her again--- never really believed in reincarnation--- but there she is, the girl he once knew---but not.

The dog’s cheerful yips become louder as it races towards him, and she follows, trying to catch her breath.  The dog barks.  “Sorry,” she smiles.  “Guess he likes you.  Nice weather, huh?  It’s warming up.”

He smiles without meaning to, and it reminds him so much---so much--- of a different girl, a different place, another time spent waiting for spring. 

He stands up abruptly, walking away.

 The realization makes him feel strangely light, strangely free.  It feels like a weight on his heart that has always been there has been lifted.  All it takes is her smile and he knows.  The girl he once knew lives on, a new person.  He’s been running in her shadow; chasing someone who left him behind so long ago.  Maybe he can begin again too; like the world does every spring.

Maybe he can finally let go now ---because those birds in her eyes fly free now---freer than they ever were, and for them, the sky is endless.  

Prompt: Dreams - March

Dreaming of Warmth

Prompt: Dreams

In the night, she dreams of him, still, and tries so very hard to remember.  The memories slip through her fingers like water, head and heart aching.

He had blue eyes--- no; green, like the glass of bottles they sometimes found on the beach.   She remembers the taste of salt, of ocean, of the wind blowing her hair back, imagining the sky opening its arms high above her.  Sometimes, she can see the dark outline of his silhouette against the glorious sunsets, where fire meets water, where sky meets horizon, where the dying rays of sunlight turn his skin gold.

She dreams of his hands, his touch, the way his eyes burn when he smiles.  She likes how different he is from her--- how he is everything she is not, that glowing, shining presence so bright and peaceful.  Balanced and perfectly calm, like the sun that touches the water, like the waves washing over the sand.

She tries so very hard to remember---and she's whispering, voice hoarse, over and over again--

"Oh God, someone please, shut her up---"

And she's awake when she doesn't want to be.

His name is the only thing she says, now, over and over again, like the ocean tide pulling in, and out.

Pulled back to reality, she stares around the grey, concrete room.  Outside the only window, the air is as cold as ice, unforgiving white in every direction, blank and frozen.  It's always winter here, but she dreams of long-forgotten summer, of clear blue skies, of the salt wind and ocean and of the boy with green eyes, skin turned gold.

The doctors say they'll help her remember the warmth, that long ago, forgotten warmth.  That's why she's here, so she can remember.  She shivers and presses her cold hands together, as the other patients stare at the walls, some relieved that she's finally quiet again.

Her body is cold, ice shards in her heart.  And yet, somehow, she knows a little bit of what summer feels like in a land perpetually frozen.  They say there’s something wrong with her, that remembering, that whispering, that unbearable aching.  That's why they took her here, to this cold, grey room. Like everyone else here, she’s just trying to find something that might make her whole again, something that she’s missing.

Her dreams fill her with longing, showing brief fleeting moments that nudge her ever closer, ever farther to remembering.  She loves her dreams, even if she can't stop saying his name, even if she feels sad, even if she always wakes up crying.

Despite that, it's the only time when she's not shivering, the only time when the sun is on her face.

She holds his hand, that warm, strong hand, and wishes for the day when she will never have to wake up.