Zanzia Eklund, "Winter Sun" (fiction)

ZANZIA EKLUND | WINTER SUN

It’s so cold that icicles are hanging from Baby’s beard. He won’t shave. I’m glad he didn’t shave. I told him to because those whiskers are ticklish as heck, but I’m glad he didn’t. Because gosh, it’s cold, and those icicles there are coming straight from his breathing, straight from his nostrils. Could you imagine those on his naked skin? His face is flushed beneath all that hair, and his mustache twitches. He’s smiling. He’s holding a disc of ice, a disc the shape of our green glazed birdbath. He’s explaining water structure and molecular structure and how hailstones form in the sky. I’m dizzy. I can’t breathe properly because all my love for him is plugging up my trachea and choking me. My eyelashes flutter, and I’m not flirting but maybe this is why people flutter their eyelashes, maybe it’s because when you’re so in love and you can’t breathe, you start to feel a little faint.

The top crust of the snow isn’t as soft as snow should be, but that’s because it hasn’t snowed in a few days and the snow crust is really ice crust. The back of my head breaks the crust with a light pop and my cap slides up and the ice bites the nape of my neck. His concern, it is sickening. He looks sick and it makes me feel sick because I’m fine, I just want to hear him talk. I don’t want to see anything but joy and wonder on that man’s face. And he kneels, bent over me, red beard and red cheeks dripping with worry.

I can see his icicles and beard melt away, I can see the clean ruddy face that I stained with concern the first night, the night we met, the night I stumbled on the riverbank and my head hit a rock. I wish I could still see that face, the one that had only witnessed one accident instead of half a dozen, and then maybe I could will myself to still my heart, I could will my lungs to fill to capacity.

But this face, right in front of me, is the one I have. There’s no fooling him, he knows how lovesick I am. I’ve fainted many times in his presence.

I awake in his bed, in our bed, tucked beneath four quilts, a bag of hotrocks at my feet, a big black warm dog draped over my chest. The sun and crystal-white snow shine together through the window into my eyes. It’s so clear out, I can see the neighboring mountain’s peak. Baby’s by the hearth, poking the embers, bringing water to boil. I groan, not because I

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hurt but because I want his attention and I don’t know what to say.

He stills, but he doesn’t turn. This time, I choose to audibly yawn, which makes me yawn in earnest. He pokes the fire. I ask him, Baby, will you please come here? And at this, he turns.

His icicles have melted and there’s water in his beard but there’s also water on his cheeks and water in his eyes. There’s mucus under his nose. He turns away and wipes his face on a red flannel-rag hanky. He thinks he’s gotten everything and he comes to my bedside, but the tears are still rimming his white lashes and there’s a small booger on his upper lip. I laugh and immediately my chest hurts; I laughed at his tears and that was wrong, and my heart is sad that I laughed at his pain. But I didn’t, though. I laughed at the booger.

My chest doesn’t care why I laughed. My chest hurts. My heart hurts. Baby’s wide full-moon face warps and drips. He buries his face into the dog’s black fur and he grips that fur like it’s the only sure thing. But I’m a sure thing. I’ll never leave you, Baby. A sob detonates and an avalanche falls onto the dog, falls onto me, onto our bed and our lives. He cannot contain himself. He is also heartsick. His heart hurts so much that he’s coughing it up, slowly, with each howl of pain. The dog awakes and howls, too.

I cry. I cry and I lose my breath and choke. My breathing trips. Baby convulses; his breathing is sick, too. Water boils out of the pot and into the fire, and now the fire’s breathing is sick, its oxygen is depleting. In unity, we ache. We gasp, we wanted to fight but now, we keen. It’s what we must do. We mourn what life could have been if maybe I wasn’t so in love.

His eyes are red. As red as his face and beard. He brings me a clay mug of mulled wine. I sip it, my left eye watching as he kicks off his boots and peels off his outer clothes, wet jacket and snowpants. He drapes them next to mine, all on the woodstack and the chairs that face the fire. He wipes his face again, this time getting everything. I peel back the quilts and he tucks himself inside. He jostles me a little. Some wine spills onto my shirt, spreading quickly, never pooling. I knock back the last bit and Baby

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takes the mug and puts it on the floor. He brushes a clove from my shirt and chases it off the sheets. We re-situate the blankets as best we can with the big oaf dog still stretched as he is.

Baby pulls me against him. He always says I’m cold as death, but I never believe him until his hot skin touches mine. This time, his thighs feel hot as coals and I worry that my hands might melt in his. Our bristly legs pattern, his-mine-his-mine, and the ice in my blood starts to melt. There is a roaring furnace in his chest cavity, I think, one that keeps him alive and keeps the love hot and warm, keeps it runny so it doesn’t stick in his trachea. Now, his furnace burns hot enough for the both of us. We tuck the blankets so that none of the heat leaks out and like this, we bask in our own heat, in our own winter sun.