He tried to tell her. Just this one thing. It seemed so simple, so unrefined. It should have been so easy to say. He tried to tell her when she stirred eggs in the frying pan, a tumult of yolks and whites, the small flicks of her her skinny wrists, the eagerness to not let any stick to the side of the pan, as if that, a sign of imperfect, of letting color slip outside the lines, of breaking the unwritten rules of lady hood.
He tried to tell her as they walked, falling a half step behind, mouthing the words into the sharp Winter air that slaps his face red, that etches proof of him into the cold, a breath cloud, a temporary fossil that lingers for only the briefest of moments beneath his nose, a frozen record that he was here, that he mattered.
He tried to tell her as her feet stood still on the sidewalk, look she whispered, the cardinal hopping here and there, a twitch, a flutter, eating something from the surface of the dry snow. Bright red, startling as droplet of fresh blood. And, then off, flying over the branches encased in ice, the frozen puddles, the heaps of shoveled snow at the ends of driveways, searching for warmth, searching for safety. Searching for home.
John's Writing 