Winter is known for it. Hunkering down inside, blanket wrapped about your shoulders like Ned Stark’s cloak, gazing out at the blustery weather and shivering.
Stepping outside is an endeavor best left to others. You see them as they pass.
The breath chilling their lungs. If they held it a moment longer the almost tangible thin layer of ice would actualize and they’d keel over in the street. Frozen lung.
But, half the fun of breathing that bracing air is the cloud you expel into the world. Sometimes it hangs, wafting ever so slowly across the scene. Or it could grasp and clutch at you as you stride on leaving it behind. Other times it gets swept away with the huff and blow of passing traffic. It moves like a receiver, juking left and swooping into nothingness with the roar of a passing city bus.
To be alive. That’s how it must feel.
And they smile with frozen cheeks and blow a puff at the sky as they step on.
Michael C. Romeo 