It was so cold you could feel it within your bones. They ached and shaked from the heavy weight of winter, consuming it fully in one swift swallow. The wind had no mercy, the ice no leeway. It was over before it even started; the survival rate as low as the temperature.
I don't remember much about that winter. Nothing but the cold of it is seared into my brain like some distant memory I will never be able to shake. As if on the day I die, it will still haunt me, still taunt me. As if the cold of that winter will forever rock my soul and shape my future and surround me with its icy breath.
My grandmother used to tell me that the heat made people crazy. She never said anything about the cold. She never told me how it stripped you naked and twisted its fingers into your hair and pulled. She never-

My mother died that winter.
Her body was cold like the river they found her in.

In the summers we used to go to that very same river and dance on its banks. We admired God for his hard work and appreciated the wonderful earth he put around us. The green of the leaves were intoxicating and the flowers smelled of hope and sunshine.
The muddy banks were cool and soft under our toes, caressing them like a newly cleaned blanket in the night.
Often times we stayed after the sky turned purple and the sun disappeared into the hollow trench the moon emerged from. My mother would name the constellations, tell me which ones were her favorites and why. I don't remember her favorites. I never listened to her, not really. Instead, I listened to the soft wind in the trees, to the smooth river, to the quiet hum of my mothers voice. I listened to my heartbeat and the rhythmic vibrations of it all, consuming it with greed and blindness not understanding the word savor.
Not understanding anything at all.

But when they found her, the muddy banks were bone hard and ugly. The leaves were gone and the flowers, dead. Their neglected petals long turned into pieces of dirt on the crumbling ground and blown into the abyss of the past where they belonged. Where she belonged. And there she stayed.
Neverland.
Never.

My grandmother never cried. The veins in her eyes were too tightly strung and woven around the gray orbs and black pupils. She only looked and saw what she needed, when she needed and how. Her mouth never smiled. It stayed obediently put, a small short line on her face. Just another line on her face.
I used to think the lines were notches. Somehow they were keeping a tally of all the haves and have nots and could have beens but weren'ts of her life like some sick game. A game, that she was inevitably the winner of but a game no less that she no longer wanted to play.
But the day she died she screamed. Perhaps for all the losses and gains she never cried of. Perhaps for all the lost souls intertwined in time. Perhaps for all the empty carcesses that had notches in their faces and no tears in their eyes.

I don't remember going to the funeral. It was raining that day, it was raining hard. The sound of the water hitting the roof made a murderous sound that I fell in love with immediately. It was taunting and destructive and loud and confusing.
There wasn't any thunder or lightning. There wasn't any wind or hail. Just the tears of God falling down and cleansing the earth. The water turned up the roots to look like the pale veins of Mother Nature herself as if she were opening herself up as some kind of token. As if she owed Him something.
Maybe she did.
Maybe we all did.
Maybe-

I never knew my father for the man my mother swore he was. He was old and stern and so f***ing empty I couldn't bear it. He smelled of cigarette smoke and expired dreams. He was sad and I didn't know him although I wish I did.
I wish I knew the man my mother fell in love with, not the one she left behind. Not the one with glassy eyes and ragged breaths and shaking hands. Not the one who lost the will to smile. Not the one who had to raise me without a mother.
Alone.
I used to see stars in his skin. I used to see galaxies in everyone.
I used to see miracles in myself.
I used to-

The first day of spring I cried.
And I felt flowers bloom within my bones.