A Walk of Memoir

A welcomed numbness framed his ears. The cold had stung, but now there was a dead void of feeling. And in every step he took, a cherry crimson ripened on his visage.

His hands perspired, buried in the deep pockets of the heavy coat. A shadow haunted him; a black figure, tall and terse. It passed lithely over the aisled walls of snow that bore the sidewalk, a motion that distracted the eyes of the expatriate. The world was frozen. The only sound was that of his feet meeting the bitter concrete.

The night had achieved an unnatural serenity in the city, but the veil that had realized peace would be ignited at the first glimmer of light. Yet this moment was his, this tranquility, no one else’s. He invited the icy air into his lungs and relished the feeling, holding it in his chest for a long moment before freeing the breath in a billow of mist.

The man viewed the portrait without seeing it. The backdrop was an unvarying silhouette. He watched the horizon; a hibernating creature that dreamt of the waking, and as he felt the glacial wind tenderly brush his cheek he knew that he was in a delusional existence. This moment, this glitch in time, would fade just as surely as the morning sun would rise. Aware that he would forget this sentient instance, he savored the cold as it kissed his lips with the tenderness of a memory.

He allowed himself to forget; to leave the world in order to truly enter it. In those seconds of fragility and absolute vulnerability, he was alone in the world and he walked, each movement elongated, each pulse petrified, yet the Knowledge loomed over his head, a darkened cloud of realization, a doom that couldn’t be fought, couldn’t be avoided, and in submission he halted at the concrete step of a porch. A light emanated an insipid aura of color upon a blackened earth. His foot lifted, the blackness lifting from his legs. In helplessness, he continued forward until the light absorbed him. His hands were white, his pants blue, his hair brown. His eyes were empty as his hand fell limply out of his pocket, a brass key in his hand, and he impassively gripped the shimmering doorknob. The sound of the door unlocking roused him and he blinked. It was cold outside. He stepped into the embrace of the warmth and threw off his jacket. Without a glitch or hindrance, instinctively, he collapsed on the comfort of the sofa and hungrily molested the remote control with his hands. It was really too cold outside.