Weathered

The heavy cover of clouds lifts slowly, reluctantly from the mountains. It leaves behind it the thinnest hint of snow, draped across the peaks and misting into the slopes. By nightfall the valley lies pitch black under a sea of stars, the big dipper suddenly huge and looming, and the air turns freezing against unsuspecting skin.

I sat in silence for a few days, watched the passing of the clouds. For a few nights, the grinding teeth left an ache in my jaw, but little by little, it subsided. The apathetic stares and ignorant gut lingered for a bit, but somehow they began to turn. It rained and rained and I ground myself into a pulp, but when that sun returned did not everything look different, again?

In two days I return to New York. To the City I have loved, and lost, for years on end. I have struggled, I have feared, I have made this decision in the most crooked fashion, but here we are. There's only forward now.

After the snow storm, the sun returned, with its desert heat and dry promise of perpetual summer. The snow recedes. All is forgotten.

A sliver of red remains on my cheeks.