Drawing In The Fog

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room.

Each glimpse was a snapshot of life, vitality, joy.

Death.

Rebirth.

She saw the seasons swell and abate, the trees grasping at the sky with their fingers, crowned in green, and amber, and naked as picked clean bones.

All in flashes, all in glimpses. Day, night, icy slicks and the umber summer burn, the lush jewel colours of spring and the russet burnt oranges of autumn.

She saw the stars pinwheeling overhead in the never ending dance of the cosmos, and the moon ever looping, the lover who cannot let go.

She never knew when was now, and when was then. She never knew the flush of heat from June's first broil, or the crackle of winter crunched underfoot.

All she saw was captured in her eyes, in the photons that bounce and merge and collide with everything, all matter, all energy, past, now and future.

All she knew was this same room.

All she understood of the passage of time was the layers of dust, creeping steadily thicker, clotted in webs spun in undisturbed corners.

She exists for those times when he comes for her, and the rarer they are, the more they are cherished, and the deeper her love, and loneliness, would grow.

When he first came, they would talk, of both meaningless moments and the most cherished times shared. Hours would pass, days even, him waxing lyrical of his love for her, even as emotion took him, and his words were drowned by tears.

Oh how she loved this secret part of him, her love, always and forever, the sweet, tender core that he kept solely for her. Oh how she existed for his clumsy, jumbled poetry, halting soliloquies gasped between salt filled refrains. How could anyone want more, than to be loved as the night loves the moon, as the flowers love the sun, as the hound loves its master to its dying breath?

As the seasons changed, whirling past in their dizzying colours, so did his words, and his love seemed to sour. That night in the dead of winter, when she couldn't see out of the window, so thick was the frost, he came with no words, only frightful rage.

He tore the room apart, almost by its seams, so towering was the fury within. Her mirror, her makeup, that antique hairclip, a cherished gift from her mother. All hurled against walls and crushed underfoot. The rocking chair in which he would sit and talk to her for hours, now broken to kindling. The books she had loved, torn to shreds. The journals she kept faithfully, burned as kindling, and failed to even warm the room.

He screamed so loud his throat seemed to tear, and slammed the door until plaster rained down on the wreckage of her life.

She tried to put it all back in its place, but nothing seemed to have a place anymore, and she gave up and mourned the rubble. Even still she craved his love.

And then, worst of all, his visits were empty. No rage, no love, no life in his eyes. No words, kind, or loving, or furious. No words at all.

His eyes would skitter past her, glance over her, even look straight through her. She couldn't understand why he didn't share her joy in their meeting. Didn't he understand that he was still her whole world?

The universe glimpsed through the window was but a shadow and a thought, a painting of that which she could never reach or grasp.

Her only true world, was him, and he could not bear to look at her, let alone touch her.

On long winter nights she would sing, just to break the silence, or interrupt the howl of the wind.

But whenever she sang, she would hear him cry.

When the world bloomed once more, all emerald hues and soft wet earth, she wanted desperately to feel the damp, life enriched air fill her lungs and dew her skin. She wanted to sink her fingers and toes into the grass and the dirt and feel all of life wakening. She wanted to breath the heaviness of pregnant clouds, the heady bouquet of fertile soil.

He hadn't come for months now.

She crept towards the window and touched the cold, gleaming barrier between her and the world she no longer knew. First with tentative fingers and then the tip of her nose, as though she could inhale the sweet nectar through the very glass itself. She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly.

She remembered childhoods spent fogging up glass and drawing smiley faces, and stinging smacks for the leaving of greasy fingertips on polished glass. She smiled and played her fingertips over the smoothness, where her breath would by now have coalesced. 2 dots and a semi circle. A self portrait of sorts.

But when she looked for her childish artwork, there was no fogged glass, or clumsy smiles. The spring day was barely visible through dust, grime, and overgrown vines creeping their way outside, slowly blocking the sun that had once flooded his room. Her room. Their room. She stepped back, taking in the image reflected in the window. As the window once painted the promise of life, the window now showed just the remnants of grief.

And her reflection.

Gone.