She dances in a snow globe, her hands
twirling the midnight air into a cocoon of icy flakes that surround her body.
They settle on her face and disappear in tiny droplets that capture the
streetlight's glow and frame her smile in a thousand points of light unrivaled
by even the starry night above. Faster and faster she twirls with outstretched
arms and a gaze that is cast skywards. She smiles. She laughs. And then she
stops.
"Join me," she says as two
mittened hands welcome me to the dance.
I take her hands and feel their warmth
instantly. She spins within the frigid air, never letting me go as she draws
closer and closer, until finally she spins into my arms which wrap tightly
around her body and replace the icy cocoon she has now shed.
"Kiss me," she whispers. And I
do. I was happy, if only for a moment.
She spins away to continue the dance but
as soon as her fingertips slip from my own
the snow globe is shaken and nature's fury overcomes us. A wall of white
surrounds me as snowflakes dash unimpeded before my eyes and blind me to the
world. I shield my face with one hand while the other blindly gropes through
the storm, hoping to touch the familiar face that comforted me with a smile so
tender just a moment before.
In the distance I can just make out a
figure before me, twirling faster and faster so that her outline becomes a
shadowy haze. I run towards her but the shadow is consumed by the storm and
surrenders itself to the unforgiving winds. Her familiar face, once the most
radiant light in my world, grows fainter still, until finally she disappears
into a storm of my own creation, lost forever behind the icy curtain.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Only once have my words failed me. Only
once have I been rendered mute by the realization that there is nothing left to
say. No more words of fidelity, no more recollections of intimacies shared, no
more pleas for forgiveness will ever bring her back. This had only happened to
me once before, until it happened twice.
The happiest moment of my life was a
single night in Boston. We waited in the frigid air for a bus that would take
us home, a night not unlike countless others that was suddenly made magical by the
snows that came at a most unexpected hour. At midnight, countless snowflakes
covered everything in a blanket of white and framed a single Boston
neighborhood in a mural made only for our eyes. The streets were quiet, the
sidewalks empty. We were alone in that moment, the only one I can ever recall
where everything was truly right with the world. You kissed me and seared into
my heart a memory that will never be forgotten.
The happiest moment of my life...and I
never even told you.
