Hot and Cold

I found it disturbingly easy to lose myself. The way it licked at the darkness was mesmerising. Slowly the festering flames pulled me inside. They teased and tumbled me from the inside out. As I peered deeper into its bowels I became totally lost in its complexity. It seemed alive with every shimmer.

The right hand side of my face had been numbed earlier by the sharp wind. It began to feel exactly the same in the heat; a lack of feeling slowly spreading. The weight of my eyelids pulled me away, detached me from the conversation. I became isolated from everything except the fingers of flame. Shadows flickered against the pale walls, one second existing the next gone. Created and destroyed in less than a heartbeat.

I lay in my childhood bedroom with the covers half pulled over my head. I had deliberately left the curtains open the night before and the early morning cold light cut through the glass, the lead lining offering another shadow, this time across my bare skin. High above the ice-clear blue was completely undisturbed.
I imagined the window being so cold that if I pushed against it the glass would shatter and the freezing air would rush inwards overpowering me. I exhaled heavily looking for evidence of my breath lingering in the air.

I looked for the warmth and the cold together.

We felt somewhat fuzzy after the night before. My reactions were slower than they should have been. My concentration wandered, refusing to focus, yet the frozen pond was weirdly captivating. The skittle of stones skimming across the surface sounded like a desperate bird. The water underneath pulsed as shards of broken ice were flung out into the middle in an attempt to crack the surface. Each failed, merely leaving a dent, a scar on the smooth skin, and underneath a throb of vibration.

The tips of my fingers burned.

Listening to the radio a journalist says that the mild winter has meant that Russia’s gas supplies haven’t been overstretched. I’m convinced I read that this is the coldest winter for thirty years.

Hot and cold. Each dictates how we experience and perceive the other. Whether I am toasty or shivering is just an opinion. Whether we want to warm up or cool down is just a fickle desire.

My knuckles are scuffed and I have no recollection of how this happened.