Eons of Warmth

It was the stars, I think.

They're brighter in the winter, the skies are clearer. It's with their clarity found snippets of peace.

At night my body shook, hard wracks against the wood of the chair I slept in. The sharp stab of wood against bone was a common cause of bruising on my right shoulder.

I never much liked the feel of cotton, yet in those days cotton is what I clung to. Though touching it sent goose bumps up my neck I envoloped my body in the dead plant. Two layers of it if I could. Even now I can still feel the horrid texture gently sliding against the very tip of my left forefinger. Yet my body shook with chills and the cold hurt. Life was stiff joints and cramped muscles. Cotton would do.

I would sit on the back of the truck and look at the stars. Look at them through the thin whisp that was my breath. I'd feel the wind bite through my three layers as the wind whipped about my loose hair. My stomach would growl and the sharp pain right below my diaphragm would stab. The dull ache spreading down to my lower gut because the moldy bread I had for breakfast was not enough. It was never enough. Nevertheless, I looked at the stars.

Mornings were filled with coughing and freezing showers, if I could work up the courage to endure such torture. The smoke from the nightly fire would be so thick I could taste it down the back of my throat all day. It would scratch with every word I spoke and flavor my food. My eyes burned. So when I got home I would sit on the truck and I would look at the stars. I would breathe the daggered air because only the sharp pain of the frigid winter could cure the taste of raw smoke.

I dreamed of a warmth I did not have. Of people I did not have near. Of bread without mold. Of a bed.

What is summer but the celebrated prime of the survivors? Spring is but a youthful testing. The summer is the celebration where not a single fear is held of the soul-piercing wind of a winter night.

Stars live outside the wane of a freezing winter. I took comfort seeing their warmth, eons old. I dug deep down, seeking to find my own warmth to last the eons and I found it. It's like the fires that I made that *did* last the whole night (many did not). At the coldest point of the night the embers burned. Not with brilliant fire, for those went out the fastest. No, with a dull glow and steadfastness.

These days I work with people who never found that fire and I only hope to spread the flame. Spread the summer. To burn through one more winter.

"In the midst of winter, I finally found there was within me an invincible summer"