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“Each question leads to an iceburn,
a snownova, a single bed spinning in space.”—from “Why is the Color of Snow” by Brenda Shaughnessy
He sees him again, and he’s surprised. He’s surprised he still believes in him. He’s surprised he still recognizes him. He’s older now. And he walks closer and closer and he smiles not like the crescent moon and not like freshly fallen snow and not like marble, not like anything but a human smile, teeth half a shade off white surrounded by the living pink, and when he stops he is close enough that he can tell they are now
exactly
the
same
height.
“I missed you,” he says.
“I knew you’d be here,” he says.
“Come to the lake,” he says.
It’s not even December yet but Burgess has always been a cold town and when there’s ice on this lake it’s safe to walk on. No one asks why until they leave the town, and not everyone who leaves the town asks. They only ask if they’re never coming back, even if they don’t know it yet. It’s not something anyone does on purpose, but it’s as unchangeable as the laws of thermodynamics.
He wears skates, and he goes barefoot.
He watches him slip over the ice unconscious of what he does, watches him buoyed by the wind, watches the fernlike patterns that bloom from wherever his skin touches, watches the way he laughs and he is laughter, he is winter, he is the smell of snow and the glitter in the sunlight and the blue shadows and when necessary he is the gale and the blizzard and the hundred-pound icicle waiting to fall from the eaves. When he met him he hadn’t realized how inhuman he was. Maybe because he didn’t know it then either. Maybe he still doesn’t know it. It doesn’t change what he wants.
He watches him slide over the ice unconscious of what he does, watches him move with that peculiar almost-falling grace of those who are changing from one being to another, watches his breath steam in the air, watches carnation-red bloom on his cheeks in defiance of the cold, watches how he moves so newly strong as to be indestructible, so unfinished still as to be fragile as the ice on the lakes that aren’t this lake, and he is so temporary, so impermanent, his time can no more be stopped than he could stop the wind. When he met him he hadn’t realized how brief his life would be. Maybe because he didn’t know it then either. Maybe he still doesn’t know it. It doesn’t change what he wants.
“You should get home,” he says.
“You should come with me,” he says.
“Can you love me?” he asks. “I love you,” he says.
“Do you love me?” he asks. “I love you,” he says.
They drift down to the covers like those snowflakes that cling together on almost-too-warm-days.
“I don’t know…” they say, and one laughs like a boy and the other laughs like the joy of the second dawn that ever was but they both kiss like boys and his cheeks are not like carnations anymore, they are like nothing but flesh and blood alive, alive-o, and his cheeks are like that too and again he is surprised, he does not usually think of himself as alive.
But yes they are both very much alive and though they know little more than to offer their hands to the other just as they do to themselves (oh they have more ideas but how long will he be here to kiss how long will he be here to kiss?) they both are getting what they want to get and what is more they are both giving what they want to give and it is not until after Jack cries
“Jamie!”
and Jamie cries
“Jack!”
that they realize they are in the
same
single
bed
where they got and gave a different kind of love, a different kind that will always linger between them like the sound of the first snowfall of winter, a different kind that grew into this kind, all those years ago.