Night Snow

It’s a small blue-grey café, tucked in a corner and invisible under a shroud of history. The wall hangings are tinted with sepia and dust. Tables missing a centimeter on the fourth leg have pondered more conversations than philosophers, bearing their coffee cup stains with quiet dignity. A long time ago it was a popular, smoky place; by now it has been half asleep for more than a decade. Still open 24/7. By the only window seats, a girl and man are hunched over the smudged view of snow and a few words.

She looks almost young enough to be in her teens, with a small frame that only reaches his shoulder when they stand side by side, like silent strangers, in shaking trains. Her eyes are at times too large for her slender face. She believes in reincarnation and thinks perhaps she was once a bird, having fine-tuned a chirping whistle that charmed him the first time they met. She is not quite sure who she is, knows only that it is a skin she’s grown comfortable in. Her hands are small and cannot form fists even vaguely intimidating: this bothers her when she is in bed and too tired to look away from the mirror. When she lets down her curly mass of brown hair, it swallows her up to the cheekbones; he loves to press his closed eyes into it and breathe until he begins to suffocate.

She is the sister that his wife has been repressing memories of for the past fifteen years. She loves him for loving his wife as much as anything else but won’t allow him to speak of her existence.     

He is more trembling than sitting in his seat, a tall broad-shouldered man who’s shadowed cheek hints at a forgetful nature, a man who shaves only when his wife scolds him into it. He loves almonds and almost all nuts besides peanuts, cannot abide peanut butter; this amuses her to no end. He is prone to melodrama, great flailing gestures she ignores. A drifter in the world of morality and religion, he picks tassels and glints off whatever catches his eye and puts it all together into a hodge-podge mentality that nobody quite understands, but that most people are impressed by. He knows what he feels for her is wrong, but cannot summon up the fire to hate himself for it. He has awkwardly large feet that are almost larger than both her hands placed lightly together. She loves his laugh that erupts and sprinkles into the air, drifting like a kiss onto her skin. He buys lilies for his wife every month, springing into her office on a different day every time. At home he cooks, delighting in banquets for only the two of them. (Lately he has been buying take-out often, explaining that he feels under the weather.)

The secret does not appear to be hurting him: his eyes are brighter than ever and he walks with more confidence than before, on the ground that he now knows will disappear from under him at any moment. It was with difficulty that he meets her, whenever she asks; even now after midnight, when his wife’s gentle snores has begun.  
  
Look. I have to leave here soon. She is utterly and completely still, giving him her eyes. A snowflake is melting on her lash and he longs to pick it off with his tongue. His lips refuse to repeat that word one more time, echoing for so long in his mind: why?

It’s not because of you. Or her. Not really. A pause. She takes a breath, blows it out onto the glass. Carves a heart on the humid mist with her crooked pinky. He shifts in the chair against what’s coming, thinking the friction is killing him.

It’s just time to go.

He wonders if this is how she left her, how she could and can again bear to wrench herself from love—the love of a little sister and now his desperate, claustrophobic passion.

Is it difficult? To let go, of everything.

His voice is rough, he coughs to clear his throat. He feels as if he is burning up, is miserable with the wintry fever for her. He wants to grab her hand but knows she’ll shake him off and cannot bear that. Picks up the empty cup instead and drops it back with a soft clink.

Not everything—but it’ll be hard, for you, anyway. I’m so small, such a tiny crumb in the world. but you’ll think it’s the hardest thing to let me go, still and why? You need to learn this. You will lose and lose and lose in this life, little bits and pieces. Big pieces.

I…

She wants to shake off her vague shame, does not want it to melt onto her. She hates messes created even by herself. It is becoming hard to tell him what he wants to hear, and this is one of the reasons she is going. In the faint light from the streetlamp outside, his face seems fragile, a strange dying sort of perfection, like a flake falling from the sky. She thinks of its beautiful and inevitable downwards dance, knows she would save him, save every snowflake, die to stop time for them. But she cannot.

Here, let her find this.

There is a new weight in his hand. An amulet. White jade, a carefully carved koi, scales flickering; his fingers tighten around it. He knows what she meant, reads the thoughts she allows him with thirst. He is already thinking of where to hide it, where the wife will find it while cleaning, how to explain. He understands that the truth would break her, understands the need to do it this way but cannot help wondering is he so expendable, that this woman would break him without such consideration? Then he feels selfish. He knows the better way to break him is if she left him without saying goodbye.  

She doesn’t say anything else as she gathers her purse and stands up, deliberately without scraping the chair against the ground, pushing a wisp of hair behind her ear. She doesn’t stop, after paying the bill, to look at him again. Even as he watches her descend into the white darkness, she is removing him from herself, particle and particle of memory washed away by snow.

With each step she begins the transformation into snowflake. He remembers her years later as a drop of purity, a light touch of cool on his lip.