Impermanence

I place my feet deep in the tracks that you laid. Branches scratch my face. I impatiently shove them aside. Lahars cascade down the mountainside, timber and mud coalescing into a slurry that pours into me, replacing bones and viscera with churned earth.
Hacked breath escapes my newly graveled lungs.
Rustle of bushes. Your tracks diminish, erased by my feet. What moves ahead of me. I cannot cough out here. I cannot give back the earth so freely. The earth will not give back me.
Leaves sullen brown. Leaves fall down. Leaves coat the forest floor around.
Soon the snow.

*

You are in the cabin when I return. We exchange no words.
I reach out to touch you, unsure if my hand is skin or mountain. You turn away before I can find out.
I cannot cough in here.
The kitchen sink is full of swirling mud. Twigs swim in gritty sludge, skeletal limbs breaking the surface before resubmerging. Leaning over the edge, I open my mouth. Drops of snow water drip into the mixture. It smells of wet decay, of turbulent endings. Despite this, around me the kitchen is still.
I drag myself onto the counter. I lay on my belly, kicking utensils and spices to the floor. There is only room for me here.
But it's your hand that pushes my head into the mud.
It's your fingers that seize my tongue and shove twigs down my throat.

*

You leave for the snow, taking my teeth. I clean up the filthy sink, wipe down the scratched counter and wait for your return.
I build a fire. My body aches, as though shards of andesite are separating my joints.
I wait.

*

Maybe days.

*

The house smells of pine upon your return. Without a word, I take the threadbare couch in the living room and leave you the threadbare bed. You don't invite me into the bedroom.
Bubbles of sap pop in the burning pine. I jump, pull my coat closed.
I slip into the bedroom. Ice crystals in your hair. Frozen distance between us. The crevasse untraversable.
I return to the couch.
Later, through half-lidded eyes, I watch your bare feet glide across the floor. They will never take damage: not a splinter, not a cut. Once they had touched my own.
Once.
I don't know how to follow you. I get cold so easily.

*

I shiver with the arrival of the winds. The thin walls cannot blunt their keening wail. My flesh a collection of burrs. What I have become, frozen: what you saw reflected in the ice fragments that hung from the edge of the roof, stalactites ready to pierce, poised to separate skin from bone. Frozen, you became stronger while I have become more frail.
The mud inside my body is a dense, solid mass that can no longer move with the heaving of my chest.
What use are my extremities? I am ready for the damage. I am ready to be pierced.
You were always stronger.
I am not starting a fire. What use would it be? You were not meant to be warm. The heat will not draw you near. If I am to join you, I will have to go to you. Will myself to become what you've become.
Uninvited.

*

Morning light seeping in through the ice-covered windows slowly dismantles the fullness of the wind.
It is no longer possible to breathe through my toothless mouth. The frozen mud blocks the passage of air. The branches emerging from my hair are translucent, slick to the touch of my heatless fingers.
I stand in front of the kitchen sink, unable to crawl onto the counter or bend over the edge. My eyes look down. The sink is full of frozen mud. I do not know how it was deposited there. Recleaning the sink is an act beyond my capabilities.
I will not lay on the bed. The cold in the sheets contains extra depth.
I was not invited.

*

Whatever hurts.
The mountainside a museum of frozen objects, tree branches turned into icicle shelves, cracking under the lightest weight. I cannot step here. I cannot move my legs or my lips. With my still-free hands, I tear off my lips. My mouth does not bleed.
An ascetic made of ice.
I no longer create fossils.
Whatever hurts.

*

It is useless to look for you here. You are no longer here, where I can no longer move.
And all that mud inside me
And all the twigs in my hair
And all the gravel in my torn-up throat
And all my nakedness and all my shivering
And the mountain reshaped
And you reshaped
And your bare feet free of splinters
And you who would never be found in the mud
And you the cascading lahar
And all the mud inside me
Impermeable.