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The cold consumes you, and first it takes your motivation.
What do you want to be when you grow up? As a kid you never knew. Would it worry people if you just said ‘alive’? When you’re six, you can still just about get away with an animal of some kind. You have this detailed thesis in your head, the crux of which is how dogs never have to worry about girls or pop quizzes.
And, well, they just play-fight, don’t they? One might emerge the loser, but their forfeit isn’t something they carry on their backs for decades. After all, they’re lucky to live more than one.
A year later and you’d twisted the question into having rather than being. You said you wanted to be rich. You shrugged whenever any particularly cynical adult asked how.
When your balls dropped you wanted something. Someone. You took her, then you threw her away when you figured out you were wrong. Uxoricide committed by a maverick hound. That is who you were when you swung that hammer. You felt like you had everything.
You had everything and then you exchanged it for the cold. The cold makes you grateful for empty rooms. And now you sleep beside and with the cold, because some people seem to carry it on their tongues. The kind of person who does things to you.
The thing is you’re forty-one this year and you still don’t know who you want to be. You’re not enjoying yourself. You’re not not enjoying yourself.
Then you’re staring into the mirror at three a.m. and you have it. You want to be anonymous the way roads are in their own way anonymous, and lucky for you, you’ve already got your wish. Only one person knows who you are. You think this makes you less exposed.
Except your back is crawling. His eyes seeming to penetrate the bathroom door.
The cold is what you asked for, but you can't stop the shivers.