I inhale the cold, breathe in the night, its infinity and cold taunting. There are no thousands of eyes - the clouds have closed them all today. The sky hurts the sky moans, dropping snow like frozen words, unspoken curses. The city wraps itself in a shroud from the phrases turned into ice, falls asleep, drowsing down the lights, and only the roads ring and shiver with stretched strings.
It would be nice to find cigarettes, to dilute the night in the lungs with bitter smoke, taste of menthol, wet breath of fire. But there are no cigarettes, only an orphaned empty tutu on the window sill, forgotten among the burned, blossoming candlesticks wax, the ashes of aromatic sticks, sleeping bell, talking with the wind about unrealistic happiness.
Winter enters the open window, shakes and circles the dream catcher, trembles feathers, confuses the cobweb, leaving on it light kisses of frost. The room becomes instantly cold, the forest grows, frozen in the frosty breath of January. Even the wind rumbles in the crowns.
You can stubbornly wrap yourself in a blanket, silently looking at the sudden thicket, or you can slam the door to quietly ring the window, to regain the feeling of closed hands, the heat of hot batteries, a fragile hearth, which is still not afraid of storms.
I don't move.
Let the night and winter and the wind come and sit next to me. Let them hold out a pack of cigarettes, smoke with me, push back from the window sill, tending the tea in the mug forgotten here.
Winter is silent today. Probably, she is tired of making frost, building snow castles, hanging a mirage of small crystals over the roads and whirling. Probably, it got boring, maybe so much that tomorrow it will cry with thaw, but so far it stands on a window sill — small and fragile — and does not dare to make one more step. Her feet are covered with snow, and wet drops from it with a deaf knocking start a conversation with the floor. The window sill resembles a thawing snowdrift changing under the spring sun.
At this moment of indecision, one can look endlessly: at the sparkling snow edge, at the sparkling with moisture, at the sparkling drops of meltwater, gray tears smearing the carpet. You can even forget so much that the dream will take you to an icy country, where Kai lost his way long ago, and not found by Gerda.
I do not want to sleep in the arms of winter and close the window. For a moment, the windows are swinging and fall with a sharp wave of lights. Just a reflection of a garland flashing on the wall, no more, but it seems that it opened thousands of eyes, blinked and fell asleep again, finding nothing interesting in the world around.
There are drops and puddles on the window sill, the light of newly lit candles, small tea "pills" hiding in figured candlesticks dancing in them. Fractional flashes of light illuminate a part of the room, and from another angle LED lights compete with them, and it seems that it is no longer a forest, but meadows in August, when hundreds of thousands of fireflies ignite carnival flashlights.
The spinning of lights makes you sleep, make you dream. Mind, a second ago, charmingly tense, finally relaxes, lets go of itself, and soon thoughts disappear as a fact, leaving room only for feelings, unspoken impulses, vague reflections, and images that can not be caught.
At this very moment, you can lie down, try to sleep, give yourself to the clinging fingers of sleep. But I don't want to. And that's why I only make music louder.
It sounds, rings, shouts, dances... no, dances, thus creating myriads of new worlds at once. Shards and edges flash for a moment, reflecting both the living flame of candles and laughing LEDs, and then the glare is lost, and the worlds disappear, flying through the walls.
Cold tea also catches the light, as if wishing to become a small lie for a narrow sickle, so similar to a month, but completely unable to fly. You have to take a mug and take it to the kitchen, but you don't want to go down the corridor in the dark that you have time to take the house. Turn on the electric light, instantly making the blind, too.
The air is filled with cinnamon aroma. What is it — music, silence, night? The smell is thick, tart, reminiscent of apples baked with honey, of puffy buns, of mulled wine... But it also disappears suddenly. Probably, it has rushed through me one more world, certainly with cities where bake everything from small to big, with coffee houses, tea shops, restaurants by the sea... A fairy tale world where it is too warm for tonight.
***
Start of countdown, day 01, even if it's not the first time on the calendar. Start, first sticky note, small flash. Everything is here, everything seems too close. Everything becomes a word, a word, a sentence... Snowflakes frozen, which drops on the sleeping city, the sky clouded with eyelids. Circle and endless gliding, rhythmic phrases, rhymes, soft sounds create this night, and maybe all the following nights, too, or even the whole world to the very last shard, to the very edge, to the very boundaries between reality and what is not.
Quiet. It's night. The first night is the reverse side of the first day. It is a draw, it is a soft silence.
And I... I just don't want to fall asleep.