The Tear of Ice

Imagine your mind, far from your body, disjointed, miles away. So far away, yet every ill emotion is like a knife stabbing and twisting in your heart. Your mind is engulfed by fire but feels no pain: only your body is being scorched. You can feel direction through emotion, two-dimensional direction like tracing the peaks of mountains with a finger.

Your mind drifts along five hills of motion, directions. Imagine this. Your mind floating along these curves, your body so far off, writhing in agony. You pay attention to every detail, the way the first hill rises so smoothly like the edge of a circle and a memory returns to you, stimulated by this single movement of your mind rising and falling. The second hill has a soft upward slope closest the first hill and a steeper, convex hill after the peak. You remember you have been close to this before. You remember, your mind does. Your body, so far away can only feel pain. That collapsing, heart wrenching pain. Between these two hills, a silver lake lay beneath, shining for the last time.

You are still imagining this. Two very soft, round, and low hills come next. You can see the last hill now, very low and subtle. Imagine drifting along these five hills that I’ve described, bittersweet memories pouring into your unscathed mind while your body is being burnt from the inside out. Five hills total, each different and filled with so many different memories. All five enclosed in a fiery envelope. You slide off the last hill and your mind delves into the fire, reawakening your senses.

Your mind is sent flying back, back, back to your body, shuttling through your flesh, tunneling deep into you. Your mind and body are connected once more and the scathing burning that was torturing your body has melded into an emotion so terrible and overwhelming, you’re begging to be torn apart with the most brutal force in existence. You want to die. You are still imagining this. Don’t loose yourself but try and understand how this feels, the worst, emptiest feeling imaginable.

The hills your mind had been floating across, the glassy lake your mind sensed, they were the profile of a face of the one you once loved. The one you still do. The one who was everything to you, your life, your world, your soul. And now, there they laid, arms folded over their chest, head looking straight up into the night sky, flames drifting about their body in a rhythmic dance.

The first hill was the gentle curve of their forehead. The following were your love’s nose, lips, and chin. That glassy lake, so shiny and perfect was their crystal eye, lifeless and still, once pulsing with blue fury. You are still imagining this. And at this point, I wish I were you because your imagined pain is only a fraction of the pain I felt as I stood there, feeling, remembering this all for real.

You can stop imagining this now. Maybe a piece of the pain I felt that night will translate into you and you can understand. And maybe next time you look at someone you love, and you remember the pain that I am describing to you now, you can imagine them in those flames and understand this feeling.

I remember my lips pressed against his, the glory and warmth that filled me. I remember the way I would gaze into his eyes, those endless cobalt oblivions. I would remember pushing his golden locks across his forehead and that childish expression he would give me, an impatient disbelief that he used so often. It always used to make me grin and he would smile back, drawing those tender lips up. I would often stand under him, gazing up at his height and grant a soft kiss on his chin, all I could reach when I was tangled in his arms.

His profile brought back fleeting memories, a black mountain range in contrast to the licking, hungry flames. Tears could not express my absolute misery as I watched. My fingers, blazing scarlet from the icy wind, shook beneath my face, catching the invisible tears that my eyes were too sorry to shed. My legs folded weakly beneath my weight and I withered down to the snow-laden ground. I felt as if a vacuum had opened in my heart, a black hole, collapsing everything that came in range. I wanted to dissolve into the heartless wind, be whisked away. I wanted my memory to flee into the darkness, leaving me a thoughtless driod.

I felt like the snow was growing colder from under me, removing all the heat from my body. I felt his heat leave me, warm nights and comfortable days. It all left and I became the icy wind. My pain sparred through me as the winds, the cold, the snow, the fire all disappeared.

I blinked and I was lying on a blanket, stiff stalks of grass poking at my back from beneath. A vast expanse of cerulean sky was painted before me. I sat up, dazed and happy, my mind calm. A pleasing, hot smell of summer grass met me and I sunk into a lazy content state.

“Are you awake, Princess?” A voice like sweet surrender sounded behind me.

Imagine the feeling of coming home after being on vacation for months. Imagine that feeling. When I heard his voice, I spun around and leaped at him, throwing my arms around his neck. The force of my desperate lunge knocked us back onto the lazy grass. My eyes shut and my mouth opened, trying to catch my breath.

He lifted me off of him but I struggled, pinning myself down again, listening to his heartbeat in his chest. He gave in, stroking my back with his firm, strong hand. Tremors shook through my body as I clung to him. His arms tightened around me when this happened and I felt him kiss my hair.

“What’s wrong, Love?” he asked, his voice concerned. “Did you have a nightmare? It’s okay now. Everything is okay.”

I clung to his chest for what seemed like hours, shaking and biting my lip. Finally, I lifted my head and looked at his face. He sat up from beneath me and pulled me onto his lap, hugging my body.

I touched his face, making sure he was real. It had just been a nightmare. Here he was: alive and as beautiful as ever. My life. I placed my hands on either side of his face, staring into his frozen blue eyes.

I spoke slowly, “Don’t ever die. Don’t ever leave me. Promise me you won’t die?” A warm, sympathetic smile spread across his lips. He lifted the golden locket he had given me from my neck, fingering it gently.

“I’m not going to die. It was just a dream,” he said, his words seeping into my body.

“Promise me. Promise me you won’t die. Do you promise? Please say you promise. You have to promise. Please?” My words came out rapidly and with an edge of desperation.

He stroked my hair from my face, looking at me more seriously. “I promise. I promise. It’s okay.” I buried my face in his chest, breathing heavily. I could hardly believe it was all a nightmare. “Do you wish to speak of your dream?” he questioned.

“You were dead, being cremated. You were dead. It was so real. The fire and the burning and the pain and the loss. It was so real. It was in a large clearing in the woods, snowy and cold. But I couldn’t cry,” I told him, my thoughts bursting out.

He looked at me with sympathetic eyes. “It’s said that you can never cry in a dream. See, proof it was only a dream,” he said softly. “Hey, look behind you.”

I turned and looked across the meadow at the horizon. The great fiery sun and all its graceful warmth was sinking below the trees, like a sail being taken down from a ship. It was the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen. It didn’t look different than any other sunset but it was the joy that came along with it. He was sitting under me, living and breathing. I felt his chest move in and out as air filled his lungs.

“The sun sets for you tonight, Darling,” he whispered in my ear, his warm breath brushing against my cheek.

I turned my head, my lips falling upon his. We embraced in that eternity kiss till the sun was set and the sky was dark.

“I love you so much,” I said quietly, resting my forehead against his.

“I will never leave you. My love for you beats stronger than my heart,” he replied.

I yawned, tired from my shock. “Please, don’t let me fall asleep. I don’t want to have that dream again,” I begged desperately, wrapping my fingers around the heart of my locket.

“I love you with all my heart. Sleep. A nightmare never visits the same person twice. You will dream happily tonight,” he said. I let his words carry me into sleep as I lay in his arms, curled against his beating heart.

I woke to biting cold surrounding my body. It was day but the sky was dark and smoky. I could smell the smoke filling me. Winds wrapped around my body, eating at my skin. I lifted my hair out of my eyes and saw the white stretch of the clearing once again. A smoldering pile of ashes was laid out in front of me where his burning body was in the last nightmare.

I closed my eyes and whispered, “It’s just a dream, it’s just a dream. I’ll wake up in his arms again. It’s just a dream. A nightmare. That’s all it is. I know it. I’ll open my eyes and it will be gone.”

I opened my eyes expectantly but the winds never vanished and nothing had changed. I heard his kind words clearly in my mind, ‘I love you with all my heart. Sleep. A nightmare never visits the same person twice. You will dream happily tonight.’

It was real or he was wrong and he was scarcely wrong. ‘A nightmare never visits the same person twice.’ The words reverberated in my body.

“Please… Let this be a dream. I can’t go on if this is real,” I whispered to the ice.

Something sparkled in the snow near the ashes of my only love. I crawled forward, icy flakes climbing over my hands, resting on my knuckles. My palms were cut and bleeding from the endlessly cold, hard ice. Ignoring my wounds, I grabbed blindly for the glittering object and held it in my open hand. It was the golden locket, stained with blood from my cut hand.

I closed my eyes and held the locket to my chest. It was real. I looked at the ashes again and felt that sucking, emptiness inside of me. A hopelessness spread through my body. The truth came: I had fallen asleep in the night, watching his body burn. I had visited him in a dream for the last time.

‘The sun sets for you tonight, Darling,’ his words pounded in my head, so clear like the ashes were speaking to me. They haunted me.

‘I promise.’

‘I’m not going to die. It was just a dream.’

‘It’s said that you can never cry in a dream.’

“YOU PROMISED ME!” I screamed. I caught myself, falling lifeless on the ice beside the ashes. “You promised…” I whispered. My eyelid flickered and a single tear fell from it, freezing before it shattered on the ice.

‘…you can never cry in a dream. See, proof it was only a dream.’