On this long night of the soul, let me stand adrift on this dark river ride. When weeping waters gnash and tear at black frost and jagged ice, let the roar of the current beat the edge of the river down into the ocean for my escape. The howling winds will slice through skin and bone, and my fingers will grip the edge of this raft. The frostbite will numb everything but the pain of the elements.
My eyes are seared shut, and I will not open them to the black of night. There is no use, no need. Vision and sight are among the many vestigial cargos I have thrown overboard to preserve the most essential functions of my brain, the lightest possible weight atop this raft. This is the breaking point, and it is where water will die and turn to ice. These woods were lovely, dark, and deep, but now the water in this last artery lunges forward with everything it’s got. Desperately, these currents outpace the death-threat of ice through sheer speed alone. Surviving plant life — what little remains — makes one last feeble effort to cling to life when the half-sinking, half-breaking raft passes up overhead, but it simply cannot withstand the winter massacre. These waters are deceptive, too — their temperature induces numbness, but it masks only the pain of death and decay. The pain is the last breath of collapsed cells and failing organs, and it carries data from the stimuli and cries out for change, FAST!
There is no fighting here. The fight is over. Ideas of awful things pass through my mind like the water in these broken woods. This is a chemical attack, state-sponsored terrorism, something else I saw on the news, a catastrophe of the most carnal degree, any earthly metaphor that my mortal mind can conjure to equate this pain to a platonic ideal. Pain, the grinding of teeth and its sickening splintering sound. This is a corpse sailing lifelessly in the wings of a vulture. Sickness, war, nothing more — this is everything that is terrible and more. And these waters are dying. If they do not move, if they do not FLEE, they will die, so they move, yet some still die. Even so these waters run, they flee, they sprint like a horse in a burning field, most importantly they hurt and bleed and strain until the pain has left and the alien ecosystems embedded in their spines have told them they are safe once more, however long that takes, however far away it is. And running is the sole thought on their mind until that moment of safety or even as they collapse and burn and die on that open field. One sole thought: Run.
I do not yet dare dream of spring. Before me still I see only ice and snow and death and hell, and it is enough. Grant me safe passage through the dark of winter.