Cold Front
I felt it again today.
We were standing, your eyes piercing through mine, a cruel efficiency.
It crept over as your smile turned into a flatline and your lids shot wide, dog's eyes, shivering and waiting,
hoping,
I reach out but the stray shrinks from my touch, teeth bared.
What is this winter, sloshing about your iris? Specks of snow as numerous as words unspoken pepper my miserable hide and I shiver, uncertain- why did I say it again? What was I doing again?
Why were we here, again?
And still your gaze lingers, waiting anxiously for my departure.
Or yours.
The icicles drip to a close above our heads and shiver like the stray's eyes and my hands are up, visible, my foot already stepping back.
In the distance, I can hear his train again- his bastion, his womb, his escape from...this.
The stray suddenly straightens as I back away and leaves abruptly, for its time is short and its schedule is ironclad. Whatever this is will wait, but the train will not.
I best not keep him, I tell myself, trying to summon the spirit of Churchill into my words, this is for the best- he will be back. The trips are longer and more frequent these days, these winter days, but he will be back.
As the stray strides off its shape morphs, becomes the shadow of the man, and a shiver of wind later he has climbed inside, the train puffs off, and I wait alone on the icy bench of the landing platform.
I shiver inside my spring clothes and breathe pain into my frostbitten extremities. Spring was here, it will return. And perhaps even a rare Summer. All vacations must end, all secrets uncovered.
He will come back.
He will come back.
I hope he will come back.