15. You were rock cold, your eyes tributaries to the air all around, frozen, flowing illusion. I dropped my coin into the well, listened to the ring of ice. I don't have to sit here, thinking about you.

14. We ran along creeks as children, even in the wintertime--you liked their surfaces, dark and glassy. They all crossed over each other in that field between us, vital veins. We ran, side by side. That was our reality.

13. Runny noses, the air full of chalk. All those snivelers tried to make fun of the color of my hair (gray--I preferred "mousy"). You always protected me. Like it was your obligation. Like you would get something back. But whenever you looked back at me I would just stare and wonder how hair could be so red, against all that fierce dullness.

12. Listen, you would say. Standing in a stretch of ghostly green, the others running, circling, parasites, satellites. All around I saw the world had striking edges, that everything poured completely unstoppable for stretches so large and heavy they pressed down on my shoulders. I took a breath in, with difficulty.

Hey, listen.

Standing as near as I was to you with my ears taking up your sound waves I realized that you were standing, there, next to me, and that I didn't understand it at all.

You just smiled and sighed, the air from your mouth turning to mist but not quite enough. When it dissolved you looked the void it left for you right in its face.

Being your friend felt like robbing you.

11. I think, even before you started laughing with the others, before that wish fell like a star into your eye, I felt the messages in the earth beneath my feet. There was molten rock rising slowly from the core. Winter's holding arms would melt away to show embers.

10. I do not think you would remember the moment the earth split between my feet and yours.

The time you left me, alone, on the field sprinkled with flowers. We were standing together, and then I watched you walk away. You didn't say a word to me. You walked and walked until you were small as a honeybee in my sight, among the ones who could reciprocate what you provided for them.

I stood.

I waited.

I fell deeper into the soil.

I waited.

You did not return.

9. With what's happened, I have learned this: Ice creatures, in times of turmoil, will eat spring flowers and spit out rage.

8. The day you would remember--the day I'm sure you will remember, no matter what changes--I only did what rage told me to do. I didn't do what you think I did. I only did to you what you did to me.

7. The day I know you will remember, the teacher came in late. It was just after free time. You had been out there. She did not know.

Her voice jumped around sharply. She pointed to your scarf, to where it was now, in between the window panes. You remember the squirrel. You remember the scarf. With all this, you remember me.

I did not look up, not at all that whole time. I could feel enough. All the emotions. The accusations.

The scarf did not make it die I thought and her words came out and there was silence. No one could testify, no one had been there. Only one child had come in early, and on all the surfaces of my brain I could feel their eyes. They did not say a thing, but the room was so loud I could not think.

It did not die from that scarf No one was speaking and the carpet pattern was light blue dark blue light dark

I know what it was and it was not The teacher led you out. I could feel your tears in my throat. I could feel the burning stones in your stomach, burning and burning until they left only coldness that freezes from the bottom upwards.

Only they knew who had been inside and their mouths said nothing. In the absence of sound I floated with a mind swimming in all the melting minutes.

6. It wanted to be in the warmth, it scratched and ran between the two window panes because it was trapped in the cold and wanted warmth but it did not receive. It was there and your scarf hung over your seat, where you had left it, forgotten. The only thing I did was tie quick clever little knots once the life was all gone.

It did not die from the scarf. It died from the cold.

5. I would eat handful upon handful of burning burning sand if only I could never feel all those eyes on me ever again.

4. We sat together again one time, after the voiceless years stole away. There was a wall of thought-bricks between us. We could only think and feel and avoid eyes.

You had been taken away, to a place for resting and breathing, where spring does not die quite so much, but too late, too late. Within you, all the light had already vanished.

You had been bright, vibrant. You had glowed from your eyes and your fingertips and all the tips of your hair and everywhere. Now, looking across the fields we used to love, there was nothing in your eyes but ice. You sat stiff, jostled by invisible winds, blending into the landscape in your starkness.

I do not know what you were feeling. I could not tell what I felt, not at all. My stomach had become numb. Maybe yours was, too.

Together in that moment we were two trees with no leaves, no branches, waiting for the never-end of the season.

3. I forgive you.

This is what you said to me, when we were sitting there, alone. Your voice cracked. The air cracked.

You said it and you walked away. I was alone. Empty inside, outside. Somewhere deep in my throat, I screamed.

I forgive you.

I could not believe you. I still cannot.

2. Now in this rigid house, with the darkness barely showing signs of fading, I cannot stop thinking about you. About me.

It has been long since that day I last saw you. I am far away, now. I told myself I had to leave, because I thought I could run away. One thing I have learned: you can’t run away from silence, from guilt. It keeps up with you.

I do not know where you are. I always try not to find out.

At times when I get stuck in this rut of memory, I've taken to going on long walks. My feet sometimes need the motion to think, and my eyes the sights--I have found fields that remind me of our childhood: the good parts, some of the bad. On the chance I run into a student I smile and play normal. I’ve done a good job of this, thus far. Still, sometimes in the middle of a lecture I will stop talking and leave, to ruminate.

This may amuse you--here, it is overrun with rodents, especially squirrels. Karma’s little joke on me, I suppose.  And of course they seem to take a liking to me. They seem to follow me everywhere.

1. The ticks of the clock are dead weights, one every second, a blow to my back. Lately, time slips away like water. Today, it has intensified gravity. It’s been difficult to breathe.

Today has marked the longest darkness. Fifteen hours without light, and I have spent all of them remembering a life I try to forget daily. Nothing helps.

But in the corners of this lonely room I sometimes see images, flashes of who we once were. Red and mousy hair, stirred by sweet breezes, against a landscape of black and green and white. Shoulder to shoulder, little smiles. Just now I remembered our jackets matched.

Sometimes I gaze upon these and think, we were once happy; this is okay. Sometimes I gaze upon these, and it kills me inside. But maybe underneath all these gnarling thorns, if I dig enough, I can find myself again. You too. They are keeping warm and frozen and safe inside of us, and they will stay, curled up, whispering to each other, until we set them free. This almost makes me feel like I did when you were still my friend--alive, my cheeks rosy with cold.

The light will filter in soon, but still, darkness. Soon I will again step into a stranger’s skin, re-enter a world that is no longer mine.

I think you should know--I have decided I cannot forget or forgive, or move on; that this me who is not me does not deserve to go on. And in the dark I keep seeing its face and in its face is your face and in yours, mine.