January 31st, Developed

It is warmer today, and there is melting. The sound of rushing water permeates the campus as I head to class, the cold just warm enough to be irking. It lacks the kindness to numb me instantly, and it doesn’t prickle enough to be refreshing. Instead, it encases me slowly, sneaking in and teasing every part of me until I can feel my legs start to tremble and the fabric of my scarf begin to adhere to my face as my breath freezes.

An icicle crashes to the sidewalk in front of me, shards scattering across the concrete. This should scare me more than it does. I have been trying to avoid the icicles all day—not because death is frightening, but still, I’d rather stay alive for a few months longer. I am not even a year old.

As the ice melts and the trees awaken, they let their branches go, so many that I cannot count the minutes, the seconds between each fall. There is the initial crack, then the soft release as the branch comes to rest in a drift of snow.

It is a symphony: the attack, the release. Over and over again it plays. Not…yet. Not…yet.

Tomorrow, he says, he will come. He can’t get through Des Moines, he says. They’ve closed the Interstate.

I hear a snap, a rustle. A crescendo, and another twig sails to the ground. There are small piles under the trees—miniature campfires of anguish waiting to burn.

It has been a week since I have seen him. Not a terribly long time, I’m told, but I am not even a year old. Time moves differently for me. One minute I am in a movie theater with warm popcorn and warm hands, and the next I am here, the chill in the air unrelenting as icy water plops ungracefully onto my head. Drip, drip, drip. Another song, not quite so refined. I am unharmed.

May 3^rd is our first birthday, the anniversary of the growth of he and I into us. We will celebrate it rushed, fingers brushing as he rolls the window up and drives away. It is always this way. Time moves differently for us, and there is never enough of it.

It is not a great distance. He could be here in five hours. But we agree: it is better not to risk it. We’re not frightened, but we’re not even a year old, so if Death will let us be for now, we will accept him later. Decades from now, when we are as old as the trees, we will make him tea and watch the water gushing out of the drainpipes.

It is inevitable, he will say. Life ends, life begins.

He will say something about a circle as well, but it will not make sense because we have not been children since we were four months old, since I left for school. The snow had not yet fallen, and we did not yet know the pain of the trees. We did not know that it could also be beautiful.

I am not even a year old, but I know this: Death will come this year. He will come to the branches, he will come to the trees. He will come to the winter. But he will not come to us.

Where I am now, branches stretch over the sidewalk, gnarled fingers against the grey sky. I cannot avoid the water. But I have a hat, I have boots. I have one heart beating in my chest. I know somewhere, far across the snow, it is beating in his as well.

I am whole.