I always feel it, the cold breeze as if a door has been left open. A crack in the world just over my shoulder. Sometimes a flake of snow will brush my cheek, burning red and purple. In the mirror I see the veins of an unwanted weed, spreading to my eyes and my neck. No one seems to notice, not my children, or their children. Not my husband, except that final night before he slipped away, as he cupped my chin and traced trembling fingers upon the lightning scars that burrow beneath my flesh. His expression left him with his last breath, unanswered, unspoken, yet pregnant with a question not coming.
It’s a hill, maybe only nineteen steps to its summit. I could count if I ever dare to climb it. At it’s top is a dead tree. It must have once reached to the sky, but now half had been torn away by some great event. A storm? Disease? Someone with an axe of dreams? One great bough remained, which swings a noose of thread so coarse I can see the snow condense upon its threads. The ground beneath it is a churn of rotten apples, all with a bite. They lie there in the frozen mud, brown, their scent catching the wind. My family always said I looked like I smelt something bad, I tried to stop it after they sent me for the scans. Brain tumours brought smells they said, and I welcomed the tests for the answers they may provide. I left bereft, a clean bill of health, smiling loved ones and the scent of sour apple.
The night my daughter told me that she was leaving I took my first step. To the other side of the world they were going. It may have been to the moon, for my bones ache too hard for travel and the screens they use seem black and dead and cold to me. Was it them inside the box? The cold cut through my plastic shoes as the grass gave way to the dusting of snow. It was summer when I had been pacing, but now snow buried my house, it’s windows open for a breeze now let drifts of white destruction into my home. A step back and the evening sun once more warmed my face, yet the shoes took hours to dry.
The second and third steps were summers, and the trees in the yard and hedge grow my height again. The house looks tired, but then it had been many years since I had painted it. A woman looked up from the garden. She looked like my youngest, a little long in the face with the blonde hair of her husband. She stared at the tree, the same face I had seen in the mirror of my youth. Fear. Resignation. The sixth step was fire upon the horizon, the city of towers looked diminished as it stood in tinder to its blaze. Returning home I did not see the woman again, but my clothes were cold with snow and reeked of smoke.
My son wants to move to the city, and even though I beg him I see the pity in his eyes. For his mother who fears the future, fears new things. He can’t smell the smoke which clogs my hair no matter how many times I wash it. He’s met a girl again, his third, and wants to make a decent try of it. I can’t stop him and losing him like my daughter holds my tongue. How many years are six steps? Would he still be there? How many steps did I have left upon flat ground? The doctor says I’m healthy for my age. My friends are dying every other week.
I wonder what those apples used to taste like?
The day after my best friend is in the ground I put on a thick coat to look at the apples. I keep my eyes to the ground and ignore the yellow reflecting in the snow. The greens, the purples. The top of the hill is flat, nearly a bowl, and the carpet of bones surprises me as the crisp crunch joins with the ice encasing them. I see a tooth still embedded in an apple, and change my mind about a taste. The sweetness is like a cloud and I can tell I wouldn’t like the lesson. I lean against the tree, eyes away from the noose that brushes my head and look out. A great ocean, still like a mirror, surrounds the tiny island. Icebergs with hats of fog bask silent beneath the red sun. The stars are different, closer, like eyes that stare down. A great black void is directly overhead, a maw, its edges bleeding stars into it. I jump and there is light.
I care not for the sights on my way down, the great forests, the colossal shadows of azure and gold, and take a ladder from my shed. Solid oak with wire reinforcing the steps. A good platform for witness. I struggle back up the hill, for my steps are melting the snow. The bottom of the ladder grinds into a skull, and the top secures with the last rung beneath the scar in the trunk. Each step up the ladder the light grows, in warmth, and love. I take the last steps up the ladder, but pause before the final one. Love and warmth has been replaced by something sublime, hollow, endless. Hungry. If I try and wrap my mind and tongue around it only a scream emerges. It grows, and grows, and the only comfort is the rough threads around my neck, the cooling snow that chokes off the sound. The ladder clangs down the hill, kicked by my flailing feet. It disappears into the ocean, not wet, not here, not now.
My breath stops, and all I can see is the light. I let its lie soak into me.
I drown.