Winter

By Lily Olson
I was born in the winter many years after I was alive.
I came into the world flying through the darkness, skidding across the black ice, then finally
breathing, nails buried deep into the flesh of my life.
I woke at dusk and rested at dawn. I did not fancy myself a woman of the night yet I thrived in
the shadows created by the light streaming through plate glass windows.
The men I was with were my sustenance. I clung to my lover as he kept me alive, force-feeding
me just enough to make it though the light and into the next night. His smooth, pale skin bore my
mark, his arms baring his life story, a tale I was permanently embedded in.
For a brief 36 days he needed me and I still need him.
For six weeks I lived in his realm under his protection. I laughed, I worked, and I smoked with
his cohorts as their equal but I belonged to him and only him. Any outsider brave enough to defy
the natural order of the night, and foolish enough to believe I was the free being I appeared,
would soon find their lives bloody and broken on the pavement in front of them. It was a game
for us and it excited me. For once in my short life I belonged; I belonged to him.
I can still feel his hollow chest, where a heart once resided, caving away from me, the fur of my
jacket brushing my cheek, softer than any of his caresses. The leather of the back seat still sticks
to my lower back. The pulsing music and the pounding sheets of rain on the roof still echo in my
ears. I am lost in their laughter, a black and gold pipe being passed back and forth. The smoke
lingers in my nostrils with a bittersweet scent. I can taste the cheap cigarettes and the citrus
Rockstars, bitter and sweet separately but mixing together on my tongue.
As the sun climbed the clouds we would scatter to our separate dens and wait out the world until
it was safe to return to our fantasy.

My friends and family tell me now that I was a shell of my former self, a worn out wisp of a girl.
They don't understand, how could they, they are outsiders to the world where I was no fragile
little twig but a woman. I had everything I needed waiting for me in the night and I can
remember it clearer than any time before or since.
I was his and only his but the truth was he wasn't mine and when it came crashing down I was
left skidding across the pavement I was born on, that I took comfort in. I was witness to my own
funeral; face down on the asphalt, arms chained behind my back.