Wrong Number

The slush of ice seeps into your boots. The powder snow that extends to the horizon belies nothing of the slick wetness that swallows anything and everything dry underneath. You continue to trudge through the crystal snow with only the ivory moon breaking the night sky’s monotony. It’s wet, cold, you’re a bit worried that you can’t feel any of that. 

You lift your head up to distract yourself from the hopelessness of the environment that seems to go on forever. Reflecting off the barren snow banks, the moonlight surreally illuminates the snowscape Two halves of an incomplete world; the moon drowns in an artist’s spill of India ink; your footprints stain the path behind you. You feel like you’re a splotch someone hasn’t gotten the chance to wipe yet. You stop the subconscious motion of patting your body off, letting the imaginary biscuit crumbs sit on your coat.

You turn your head to the sky again and let your mind wander; the moon once didn’t stand solitary. You miss the stars. Were you inadequate to the judge of the universe – you and all those around you? Have you all chosen the wrong number in the world’s great lottery? You had never found out why the stars in the sky had disappeared, why the world had frozen into a desolate landscape. Someone above had deigned to let some light through, pricking little pin-sized holes in the massive fabric surrounding your planet, only to inexplicably cover them up again. Sure, you know you have changed. You once were human, and now—not. You don’t feel much anymore, but that is helpful. You don’t feel the biting cold nor the aching loneliness. You remember those things used to hurt. But, you think, there was something so human about that existence, something that once had inspired revolution and fire in your blood.

Nowadays, something a lot quieter sinks in your life blood. It’s frigid, suffocating, the way you imagine engine oil might be in the winter months. It freezes you into something mechanical with gears and wires. You feel a tick tick tick inside of you that counts time instead of a heart. 

You begin to think of her. When you look at her, her work-worn hands, her reluctant smiles and gruff demeanor, her outspoken declarations and unwavering persistence, she washes the cold away. After all, she leaves a smoldering fire burning at the pit of your stomach, leaves you seeing red—robust, riotous red—and crashing waves of shard-like blue and eye-searing, brighter-than-the-sun yellow. 

She startles you. In fact, she frightens you. She gives you everything that can be stripped from you. You’re scared to lose what you call yours. You’re scared to lose the touch that transforms you into something that’s not so achingly cold. But more than that, you’re terrified of the reality where you never found her. 

Even if you’ll never see the stars above, even if you’ll never see her again, you could never condone this world for all it’s done to you, to everyone. You’re the last one left. One out of one. So you wish with all your might, that in the next life you might see her again, might have the time to do everything you don’t have the agency for anymore, even if that means drawing the wrong number.