The Last Spring

You should not do this, I told myself. It will come to no good end. You are advancing a moment of bliss which you will have to repay with misery for a long, long time (this was later the substance of an unspeakably amateurish sonnet—I had far too much time).

Don't do this.

But I could not resist. The flurry of snow and rain, almost as if I had wished them into being, spun in helices of gold in the cones of light from the street lamps.

I hugged my jacket tightly, absorbing the cold. To make up for the life I had spent not experiencing this wonderful, wonderful cold, to store enough for the remainder of my life.

Absorbing the moment. For safekeeping, for the remainder of my life.

Please let there be snow, I had wished, and there was snow.

Whenever I feel down or let down I would think of this singularly beautiful moment. One that can never be replicated. One that is so utterly perfect that it can never be matched. Which would make me feel even worse and let down, but that is what I gravitate towards.

When I had returned to my room I wrote something about cold down falling, the trees forming an arch, and words I wanted to say being caught in the mist of my breath.

I cannot find those three lines anymore (and I do not know where the sonnet is).

Statue

I squat by the toppled Statue and finger the pieces morosely. Did I build him too grand? Did I build him too immaculate? Perhaps I should not have built him at all. What did I do wrong? Now do I build a smaller, humbler Statue from the remains, or do I remake him in all his fullness? 

The landscape is littered with pieces of broken stone. In the distance the sun hovers, a circle of inscrutable, yawning blackness, both too near and too far at the same time. It draws nearer with every moment, imperceptible, until I get distracted, and when I turn back—it is frighteningly near. And at the same time too far, wretchedly far. 

The toppled Statue stands, or lays, by the Marble Ruins. I approach the Marble Ruins. I kneel down, and pick up a piece of marble. Until the sun arrives I toil away, repairing what I can, all the while hoar frost forms; maybe I can find some warmth tonight. Maybe the sun will finally arrive. I gaze longingly at it. But it does not respond, it will never respond. 

What about the Statue? I do not know. I do not know what I did wrong. I do not know what to do.