or um. Um Roger and. and winter. how he loves winter? yea
Stand straight. Feel the sharp air pinch your cheeks and bring tears to your eyes. Inhale as deeply as you can. Feel that? It’s clean air. It’s pulling all the dust from your old lungs. It’s making you clean again.
What you would not give to be clean again. Sometimes it feels like your skin is covered in black tar. It coats you like oil, it makes you slick and stained. You ruin everything you touch, you know that?
The snow’s blinding. Is it a blizzard? Maybe it will bury you. Maybe it will carry you away. Maybe you’ll never see anyone ever again.
You just want to be good again. You want to feel good.
This is rather self-depreciating, says a voice that sounds a bit like your sister’s. Do us both a favor, and just enjoy the frost.
She’s probably right; she usually is. She’s not buried in forty years of aimless guilt.
You inhale deeply again, shove your hands into your coat pockets, and walk into the blustering cold. Each step is slow, solid in the packed ice. Your prosthetic holds, though the joints whine and stick. You keep walking.
The bench is covered in ice; you brush it off, and sit, and close your eyes. There’s nothing but black there, versus the single shade of white when you open them.
This is your empty thoughts bench. You think as many thoughts as you can on it until your head’s too tired and empty to continue, and then you sit some more and just absorb your surroundings.
It’s a good day to visit the bench. The snow helps you clear your head.
You tilt your head back to face the sky, close your eyes, and breathe.