Sunday, February 26, 2006

your favourite stranger


Its always the same. The snow starts to fall and he recoils, screws up his face and takes two steps back from the window. He leaves us wondering what went wrong between him and that charmed white visitor. When did they fall out - and what was said?

Maybe its a matter of weight. He is so solid, so bound to the earth beneath him. He cannot grasp her delight at drifting slowly down from somewhere so high. Maybe its all to do with colour. Or her silence of colour. One as highly patterned as he - all definite swirls of brown and yellow and green - must be disappointed in someone so pale, so vague. Or maybe its her coldness where he is heat. A rock drawn from a fire now extinguished but still smouldering - we hold our hands against him to warm us through these winters that she weaves.

We may never know his reasons - so we stand, mesmerised, watching him watching her - till snow turns to rain and he turns to go.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I feel chilly reading this beautiful piece... You really know how to conjure up a feeling through your writing. My favourite line is the last 'till snow turns to rain and he turns to go.'

jem said...

Oh fjl - I feel like I have led you astray - you are a fortune teller trying to interpret the cards but you have the deck upside down. There is far less emphasis on love and/or its loss in most of my writings. I shall mail you privately the true background for this piece!

fjl said...
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fjl said...
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jem said...

FJL - thank you greatly for your comments - however I have removed them as CLASSIFIED! As I enjoy allowing future readers to make their own interpretations of my piece without having the insider knowledge that I shared with you. The gentleman in question agrees with me :)

I hope you dont feel that this infringes your eternal freedom of speech.

fjl said...

Oh print the classified info it's lovely!

jem said...

Sorry fjl but its staying classified. I really want the writing to be whatever any reader wants it to be - without influencing them with 'the truth'. Also I like to keep my real / private life pretty guarded, and not post directly about it online ;)

jem said...

[interesting... it seems that someone has edited these comments so that it appears as though I was having a conversation with myself... but I distinctly recall there was someone else here, I even remember some of the things they said...I am sure they told me to leave their comments up if I was serious... which I did... I wonder where they went... curiouser and curiouser]