Cold, defined…

Damn, it’s cold.  Not annoyingly chilly, not even the persistent damp cold that gets under your skin.

Now well below zero, this is the kind of cold that freezes your nose hairs on your first breath outside, sears your lungs on the second breath.  The kind of cold that sucks all the moisture out of your skin, leaving a freeze-dried and crispy semblance of yourself.

Hell -- this is hell.  I don’t picture flames or even calm black nothingness when I imagine hell.  It’s right here.  Hell is here now, a brittle white hoarfrost coating everything, a dusting of fly-away snow, too cold even to clump into snowballs. 

This cold bites at you, biting at your flesh through even the warmest, thickest of clothes, chewing through goose down and insulated snow pants, searching for bones on which to gnaw.  Fingers and toes are numb, palms and feet tingling; the snow burns when it comes in contact with any exposed skin.  Exhaled breath trails away and falls, frozen immediately from vapor to ice, unable to rise.

Even the birds are leaden, as if frozen to the trees, too cold to forage for food.  Never ones to give themselves away in hiding, the breath of squirrels and rabbits is now visible, cannot be helped.

So damnably cold.

I’m desperately searching for reasons not to take the trash out to the curb.  Why, oh why didn’t I take it out when I shoveled the damn driveway earlier this morning?

11:10:29 AM    comment []