Cold-ish

So this is late. Sue me. It's been written for a week and a half, though. I hate finals. They deserve to die.

Okay, so I cheated. I actually didn't take this picture for the word "cold," I took it for the word "window" about a year ago, but it still seemed like it fit. So I added it becuase I had no time to ponder cold.

You are cold. Cold cold  cold cold. Cold despite all the blankets woven around you, tight as the strands that hold them together. Cold despite the heat that your mother had turned up several times upon your request. Cold as though you were still at the bottom of that river, like you’re still floating in the black and the nothing where you turn right and think it’s left where up is down and bubbles fly and direction is all wrong and where you kicked hard thinking you were going up but maybe not. Cold like his eyes as he looked at you, cold like his hands on your face as he reached out and just enforced the feeling that you did not want to be there that you wanted to run.

            And it had been warm then, the heat coursing through your veins as you tried desperately to outrun what cannot be escaped and as the eyes, the eyes, followed you and the grass laughed and the flowers bobbed their heads in an effort to be polite and as the footsteps behind you wouldn’t let you go. As the angry breath reached your ears and you wanted out out out and you were running and nothing mattered except the run.

            You wind another blanket around yourself but you know that it’s worthless, just like all the others are worthless. Because you could go into Bed Bath and Beyond and pick up everything n the place and hide, dive deep into it and never come out and that you’ll never be warm again. Because it’s the eyes, the eyes you can still feel following you, the feet on the pavement as you flee and the feeling of the world falling out as you go over the edge, as the water opens its arms to welcome you and solid earth is nothing, as his face is the last thing you see before you can see nothing and it’s all dark dark dark and maybe there are fish down there or maybe it’s too polluted. As the nothing in the nothing and it’s only your arms holding you down as the water tries to carry you out.

            As you lose the last bit of warmpth you will ever have. Because back when you were little you used to hold out your hands to the snow, watching the flakes (all the millions of different flakes not exactly the same) melt on your palm when they hit it, but now you know that the flakes (all the millions of different flakes not exactly the same) would just collect, would form piles and snow drifts and someday little children will build forts in your hand because you’re ice, you’re colder than ice. Colder than the water and colder than his eyes.

            And it’s so cold and you shrink away from the concerned stares and you’re asked if you want the heat up just a little more but you know it won’t do anything so you just shake your head and pretend that you’re comfortable. Because the hot water means nothing and the cold water feels normal. Because everything is cold, everything is and will always be cold cold cold and the sun will not shine and if it does its rays will be made of ice.  

            Because you’re cold.

            You had thought in that time, in that time underwater that the rocks at the bottom were the most unfeeling things but now you know that that’s all lies. At that moment where you were swimming up but going down, water carrying you as though you were a small child, it was at that moment that you thought it wasn’t going to get worse. But it did, it did, the surface was a million miles away (getting farther though you didn’t know it in the dark in the nothing because you couldn’t bring yourself  to open your eyes) and after awhile you just gave it up because it didn’t tmatter and it was cold but getting warmer and then after awhile you were warm but you couldn’t breathe, not anymore, but the eyes and the feet might be there with you so you just kept going and then you were warm (was that the last time?) and then there was nothing because it was black black black and dark and nothingness.

            It’s not nothing anymore though, because you’re sitting on the couch smothered in blankets and your family is walking around in tank tops because the house is so warm but out of courtesy to you they don’t want to change it and you just sit there blue lipped and shivering because it’s so cold.

            Cold when you felt the hand on your arm bring you back to life, when you screamed as they pulled you out because you’d thought he had found you, when you were lowered choking and gasping onto dry land back onto earth (and were you imagining it when you just saw him slip away out  of the corner of one eye?) and they were all frantic and yelling and asking if you were okay and you were okay you were okay

            But you were cold.

            Cold wind on your wet clothes and cold everywhere and cold cold cold cold cold cold cold.

            And you’ll stay here under these blankets because there’s no point now in even trying.

            It’s so cold.