A bubble of warmth envelops my body under the blankets. It’s freezing outside, and I can see the hail and snow dance with the frenzy of a couple that have one night left to live and love. I snuggle in closer to her, feel her curves fit along me like a key in its lock. This is where I’m meant to be.

We had spent the morning sledding down roads covered in slush, alone in the endless hilly suburbs, the snow blindingly bright in the rising sun. All our neighbors had made the more intelligent decision of staying inside, but we live the day like there won’t be another. We’re snug out here as well, tightly packed into a cheap red sled. She’s basically sitting on my lap, which does both wonders and problems for me depending on the bumps. We fly down, snow spraying up and blasting our faces as we try to keep our eyes open, with water trickling down underneath our clothes. We giggled every time at the bottom without fail like the toddlers we are, she proceeded to push me into several snow banks to get a headstart in the races back up top (leaving me with the sled). I consistently caught up to her and “slipped”, ending in her inevitable victory, and back down we would go. She was permanently aware of how close we were, and took undo pleasure in my heated face as she squirmed into her nook in my lap. Finally, once she had exhausted both of us, we went back inside to warm our icy extremities and her hands found their way under my shirt, much to the complaint of my skin.

“Well I guess the snow means I can’t go get that gift that I definitely didn’t forget at the store.” I say with a sad face. I watch her face fall for just a second and my face opens up in a wide smile.

“Jerk!” She says as she pouts at me and punches my shoulder.

“Sorry, sorry, but really I wish we could go out for our plans. This storm’s the worst for Valentine’s Day.”

“That’s okay,” she comes in for a hug and she continues with a whisper in my ear, “this is where I’m meant to be.” Her sweet voice sends chills down my spine, and I start attack-kissing her, little pecks all over her face and neck until she’s forced to run away laughing.

We cook my choice for lunch: Indian style curry that warms me up almost as much as she does. A knobby snowman named Olaf, (big Disney fans), and many snowballs follow after we’re done eating. A shower together, “We’ll huddle together like penguins for warmth,” she says with a small grin that tugs at the corners of her mouth. Dinner’s amazing, her choice of spaghetti and meatballs, and she covers for my abysmal taste for spicing and I get the grunt work done. There’s a unique satisfaction to eating a meal that you have made with your own hands and with a loved one.

Gifts are given to many hugs and only a little crying. Hot Cocoa with mini marshmallows is the chaser as we watch Hercules and sing the songs too loud and off key. I find myself interlocked with her under the blankets watching the storm living in its own moment. I give her a quick kiss on the back of her head, and wonder at how this is real life. This is actually happening, this is my life. What have I done to deserve such a perfect day?

She starts to do the worm against me and I laugh, jolted slightly from my comfortable position. The blanket shifts as well, and some fresh air drafts in.

“Now I’m cold,” I pout at her.

She flips over and looks me in the eyes, “Well I have a remedy for that…”

This is where I’m meant to be.

A yearling just died in my backyard

After dragging itself from the road

Trying to find where it had been born

The herd was long gone leaving no guard

None to pay the tribute that was owed

Humans were there and they did not mourn

I came home from this life to nurse wounds

But the world’s not kind and did not leave

And home feels so strange and different now

Family feels less like a cartoon

More a sad truth that I now perceive

“They don’t know me” told by their arched brow

A lonely dead tree covered by crows

Black eyes foretell murder and despair

Strange to other trees in grim dark leaves

Loneliness as deep as broken vows

Leaving the ones for whom you still care

Now felt in threads yet to be in weaves

I pity crows but not the forest

One just blights the sight of the other

Other is blighted by the crow’s sight

Cut off by the whispers that chorused

Behind to make doubts of another

That could even share in this tired fight

Maybe they predict worse kinds of death

A death of old age and frown wrinkles

Alone and different on a death bed

The life that gets bored of drawing breath

Can’t speed up the path of sad singles

Late thinking of what should’ve been said

But those crows had each other at least

Friends can keep a lonely life living

Finding new reasons each day to breathe

Normally, I would try to make something like my most joyful memory appear elaborate and intensely stylized, but the girl I write about likes short descriptions, so I thought this should be simple and honest.

I said I love you to a girl during the summer. On an old picnic bench littered with geese poop and said geese being very, very, loud. There was a bee that wouldn’t leave us alone (because she was so sweet obviously) and it was hot out. Sitting on that picnic bench, sweating, sweat glowing on her forehead, I said I love you.

I described it once later like I felt I was being filled with warm honey when she replied, “I love you too.” She was sitting on the table, legs on either side of me, staring into my eyes. When I had turned around earlier she asked me why I had stopped looking at the rolling water of the river. I said, “I prefer the view on this side.” Which I quickly followed up with, “there’s a mountain past you you’re kind of blocking my view actually.” We laughed.

I kissed her, and suddenly there was no world. The other people faded away in the park. All that was left were her soft lips. At least until the bee came back, his name is Jeffery and he was incredibly annoying.

I said I love you for the first time on an old picnic bench. There were geese, bees, loud people, and the hot sun, and it’s my most joyful memory. Saying I love you to a girl with beautiful brown curls and magnetic green eyes, and being so absolutely confident in something for once in this life.

Driving in a red car

In a blue tint world

It was slightly bizarre

My life was unfurled

Hurtling down the bland road

Music sounding grey

Hidden weight on my load

Brain started to stray

Just one foot from my eyes

Passed more tired souls

Rushing a slow demise

Like all of our goals

The steel guard rail and these

yellow lines began

to chafe and I unfreeze

from the mold of man

One swerve or one movement

So tempting to try

Maybe an improvement

On this form named “I”

It couldn’t be much worse

Than this world’s rotting

I think we’re in reverse

Life thrills in cruel plotting

I can now see a scene

Of mangled metal

Twisted dreams could’ve been

Me a crushed petal

I almost died on my way home

to chance embrace pain

feel less like this hard chrome

in this worldly drain

But I don’t have the strength

In my trembling arm

Since there I see at length

My mother smiling

When I see your face,

When I hear your voice,

My mind goes without trace.

Your laugh brightens my day the best

And those smiles make me forget,

Butterflies flock to that empty hole in my chest

Tin man that needs oil

That's my number, excuse me

Clunking through towards my foil

It's my turn to get a clue

Three years liking others

Three years loving you

But still, I come back

To this place I know you'll be,

And I slip into our foundational cracks

Apologize to another lonely heart

That thought they meant something

To this tunnel vision that can't restart

I feel stuck here but,

The last time I felt so happy I couldn't stop smiling,

That was you, now this is a familiar rut.

There's a reason I come back.

Where should I look for us

I sometimes sit and think

Where did we go

Are we in that place that sinks

Beneath the stars and in the sea

In our half remembered dreams

We never got to see

A penumbra of love

That's all I have

A shadow of a shadow of an empty cave

Like that time you gave me

A weak side hug, and

I got in my car

I drove home

I tried to pretend, but

I knew though

I yelled, and yelled, and yelled, and no one was there to hear

So maybe I can find us in that little space between our hands

As we pet that soft dog, and we pretend we don't exist

Sometimes it's better to pretend, to forget each time we kissed

Or maybe I can find us in that little pause

Before I answered "no"

When you asked me

"Are you okay?"

I think I can find us here though

In tired teary memories of happier nights

When I could look in your eyes

And still find us

There is a wonder in waking

There is a glory in life

There is hope in my eyes

The light on the horizon

How my dreams live on in me

How time runs faster than me

How bright it shines for me

The light on the horizon

You are here in my thoughts

You are my reason for being

You are my happy ending

The light on the horizon

Our love was born of railroads

Our love was on the straight and narrow

Our love was as solid as the tracks

The light on the horizon

We played for hours here

We liked the danger and thrill

We didn't know this morbid irony

The light on the horizon

You aren't here with me though

You can't be, and no one else

You can't see this

The light on the horizon

My life is shortened now

My time is seconds from up

My eyes are taped open for

The light on the horizon

They gave me no reason

They game me no rhyme

They gave me no mercy

The light on the horizon

The ropes are tight

The tracks are hard

The light is bright

The light on the horizon

That sound gets closer

That rumbling nearer

That stairway to heaven

The light on the horizon

No price was paid for me

No lover has come

No comfort at all except

No time is left to think

Just me and my tears and the sight.

The light on the horizon

There.

I heard a creak.

A rusty chain was moving, back and forth, back and forth.

I turned my blurry and blinking eyes towards the source from my little hollowed out space in a stack of pallets. Some snow fluttered down that I hadn’t disturbed yet from the wood above, and I carefully brushed it off my cheek with one gloved finger. I could barely feel the touch in the penetrating cold. I had been there for three hours, hoping one of the rare deer would come by for the sparse grass still left at the elementary school’s playground.

Instead of deer though, I saw a little figure on the swing, going back and forth, back and forth. I could feel their warmth, feel the cloud of mist that their breath left in the freezing air. The narrow viewing point I had was still enough to see the little figure’s blue puffy coat, with black zippers and black boots.

Why are they out here? That isn’t enough clothes for this winter. Surely there is some shelter?

But reality is harsher, and I knew this little figure probably had nothing left, in fact my own stores of food were gone, and I was far better prepared to survive the aftermath than this child. Suddenly, the thought dawned on me.

What if I…? No, that’s terrible! But they’re not likely to survive much longer now are they, not like that. I won’t, I can’t, I will never stoop so low!

Despite my resistance, my hands moved instinctively, finding the ow I had found in the sports store on the other side of town, my right hand fitting an arrow. Conveniently, that narrow gap was wide enough to fit an arrow head.

Even as my hand drew the string back to my cheek, and my eyes sighted the target’s little neck, something stopped me. Some shred of humanity left alive, despite the beast in my stomach. I relaxed my grip, and tears started to flow, but before I could even process it, my hand jerked back to my cheek, the woolen cloth barely cracking my icy exterior.

They’re just another living thing, like all the rabbits and deer from the fall. They are human! It’s survival of the fittest. They are a child! That won’t survive long enough to have to make decisions like this. What have I done to deserve this? Just keep surviving. I WANT TO LIVE! Why, why did I live? What crueler fate could have been bestowed on one human? Keep fighting. Yes, I’ll keep fighting. I’ll live on this meaningless life as I lose the memories of those I held dear before the blast. But I’ll do it right. Right is a relative term, a grey area.

So it continued for almost an hour, the string becoming taut and lax as either side was winning, death on the line. The arrow went back and forth, back and forth, a pendulum of destruction. Throughout it all, the small, puffy figure kept swinging, oblivious to the presence of another. Eventually the internal battle was interrupted by a new sound, the faint sound of crying. So strange, the two of us sharing in this deep tragedy, loss as stinging as the salt of our tears in open wounds. For five minutes, I mourned the near loss of my humanity and the growling of my clenching, empty stomach. For five minutes the little, blue figure cried, and I think it was because of the memories of a time that would never be again, when the worst thing they had to worry about was that one grumpy math teacher. What a simple time.

The crying abruptly stopped as the little figure fell forward into the snow, and lay still. I was stunned for a moment, but slowly got up and removed the lid, showering myself with a dusting of snow. I shook it off as I climbed out and replaced the top pallet. I realized that the sky had grown dark quickly, and I had gone another day without a catch. I crunched through the thin layer of snow on the ground in between the shed and the playground until I reached the prone body.

I flipped the small body over and saw that the eyes were frozen shut with a pair of frozen streams down each cheek. I touched my own cheeks, and felt ridges that said I had them too.

I knew she was dead, but there must be a way to melt her frozen heart right? Maybe it was her reminder of a half remembered neice. I carried her back to my hunting pallets, as it was too late to get back to my shelter, and set up a tarp, covering it up for the fast approaching cold of night. In the pitch black of that hole, I rocked the frozen body back and forth, back and forth.

I am still human. I am still human. I am still human. I am still human. I am human. I am human. I am...

I think I should have let the little tornados suck me up into the sky with the leaves. It was a strange afternoon to meet someone new for dinner, I admit in hindsight. Although it is a testament to our engagement in the conversation that we didn't notice what was happening around our small green picnic table.

As we walked back, I pointed up at the sky in surprise.

It was a startling and unnatural red, combining a sunset orange with a strong rust red that seemed more at home on mars or in an apocalypse. The wind was whipping past ominously, promising of a storm to come. I looked back the way we had come, and the burning sky transitioned into a bruised, brooding purple, the color of nursed resentment and vengeance to come. Beyond that, a mass of black storm clouds hung heavy and low to the ground, ominously making their way across the sky. The fire was ready to meet the storm, and the battle lines were quiet with anticipation.

I learned soon after that the forests had been burning, all the way across the country in California. How fitting for such a year. Maybe the sky really was depicting apocalypse. Two sides fighting to see which would be the final judgement of inconsiderate caretakers. So I'll amend my statement.

It was the perfect afternoon to meet someone new for dinner.