Chapter fragment

There are no beautiful sunsets in this season of darkness and greedy chapters. The snow. It hurts the warm soul, causing it to crack and break between the lines of sanity and reason. I felt it's icy sting even more after I kicked my husband out, and sat beside myself trying to soothe it with hot tea.

I had felt it for so long. I began to feel the freezer burn in my throat again once I knew he was feeling it, too.

The week he arrived back to the Midwest he was arrested. There had been an outstanding warrant for his arrest, and they got him right way when he entered the state. After fifteen years, it seemed as though I was just here waiting for his return. Of course he sacrificed and endured arrests and the shit weather and the stains on the front of his coat to be near me. But, he didn’t know that yet- he didn’t know why he was putting up with it all. It was just too damn cold here. Very few can actually say that they enjoy the bitter cold, really. I mean, besides the massive snowmobilers and their fat wives who serve them chips and beer during football Sundays. It was not a place for either of us. But he trudged here unknowingly into my arms, into the snowbanks of this sad town. Despite the snow, stains, and sunless Sundays.

Searching for some semblance of sanity I stepped outside for a cigarette and saw the snow angel in the front yard. He stumbled to that spot in a drunken frenzy the night before. He was gorgeous and awkward in the whiteness, in the glow of the streetlight. There was something more to it and I knew what was next. And it was okay. At that moment I was not what I needed and I was not what he could endure. Not what he needed, either. And that was okay, too.

He required circled sunlight and longer days. I had felt his gravity for all of my adult years and it had gone from me but it returned all at once when I saw that snow angel laying gently on the frozen ground. I was not what he needed- not now. I knew it and said it again and again in my mind. All at once he was just barely more than a blurred photograph on what used to be my husband's bedside table. It’s not always what he would be. He would again be a warm and tangible tee shirt against my bare back.