We lie in a large bed, blankets piled atop with weight and purpose. Exposed slivers of skin give warning of the chill in the air, but in the deep bunker of sleep, we don’t notice. Bizarrely, the window is open just a crack and a wicked knife edge of air comes through into the bedroom where we sleep. Soon, one of us makes the ice-footed journey to the main room and starts the fire again, for which the other is grateful, waking to the soft crackling of wood. Returning to the bed, lifting the blankets seems almost an architectural experience, there is such a weight, such a structure to the arrangement. Snuggling against me, you slide your bloodless feet against mine, your cool hands finding my slack and sleep-warm breasts.
God, I’ll never get used to the cold here.
Sure you will.
You kiss the back of my neck with lips so large and tender that I forget everything except butter-soft skin and the broad acre of back. But then I remember that I am not sure at all and later I evaporate from all memories, fleeing back to familiar, warmer shores; everyone comments, with sympathetic sighs, “she just never really liked the snow” or something similar. Without blame they let you know it was never really going to work. Some things, some people, they just have a place, and it belongs to them and they belong to it: you can admire the rainbow glory of your tropical fish, enlivening your home with exotic colour, but one day you find them floating sadly horizontal in the tank.
But this is not the thought for now. For now, there is only the icing sugar dusting of the windows, the lone bare fingers of the trees reaching into a washed grey sky, the quiet outline of the houses against the winter, memories of other evenings matte and faded now against the clean sharp lines of the road recently cleared, all sounds pitched distinct and sharp through air vibrating faster than before, and the two of us, lying in bed.
eleanor j jackson 