You stand in the wasteland that has become your exile, pulling your coat shut against the bitter, icy winds that batter against your homesick heart, causing it to freeze over and threaten to break into a thousand sharp pieces with every beat. They say that the winter is a time of beauty, when the snow falls from the sky like cold rose petals and set in your hair, giving you a wreath of purity; when children twirl in glee, their laughter echoing from snowbank to snowbank; when the warmth and light from the fire in the hearth ignites your soul and reminds you that this is the opportunity to start anew.
You flinch and clench your teeth from the shock as a snowflake settles on your eyelashes, melting on impact. Winter Wonderland, indeed. Why, Antarctica was the coldest place on earth, and it was a desert! This was a desert as well, a smaller one, but it still isolated you and caused you to float far away on tropical winds, carrying you to a place far more welcoming than this, while you simultaneously crawled the inches upon inches of monotony. It was a loner's travel, a travel to nowhere from a somewhere that does not beg for you to return.
You find a swing in a playground and mount the narrow seat dripping with sleet, feeling the wetness soak through your many layers and grease your skin, the chain-link which you wrap your fingers around cut through to your bones like a knife into soft butter. The playground offered you refuge from the darkness that crept towards you and devoured your mind. The bright, cheerful colours of the equipment peeked out from under the new, bland coat of wet, white paint, giving you hope that something more than yourself existed.
You lean your head against the chain, feeling the chill seep through your cheek, and dig the toes of your shoes into the foot of snow beneath you. It was inescapable. This cold, this fear... It cradled you in its arms with its charm, its promise to protect you from the horrors that exist in your world, and betrayed you to the danger just out of reach by exposing you out in the open. All of your worries, your mistakes... They were on show for everyone to see. You don't know what's worse: the nightmarish reality, or the deceitful dream.
Well, one thing was for certain. Soon, your self-imposed exile would be over, and you would go crawling back over that desert, with a thirst in your mouth for your nightmare to continue. You would sate your thirst with a hand across your head, a foot at your abdomen, or a piece of broken glass that was picked out from those shards of your heart at your throat.
You would go home again, but the sweet promise of safety, grasping you by the shoulders and shaking you out of your ignorance and into the cold alert of winter, would remain.
