My New Year’s Eve with Tirzah…
Walking through her German village – (our German village, I can say for now) – our latest heated argument punctuated by the battle sounds of fireworks.
Staring at the bursts of color in the foggy sky, my expression sobbing while the tears refuse to fall. It’s been a wretched day.
Is this how the old year ends? I mourn. Is this how the new begins? In painful misery? I don’t want that kind of year. Not again.
Maybe a bottle rocket will shoot me.
* * *
Meandering back down a side path. Stopping to stare at a tree – bare except for water droplets glittering in the smoky glow of a streetlamp. Silent music, melancholy beauty.
“That tree is Allyn-a-Dale,” Tirzah says, then looks to the flamboyant sky. “The fireworks are Will Scarlet.”
Will’s laugh through my throat. “Yeah they are.”
* * *
We – the hosts and the host inside of them – take a seat on pathside boulders. Embracing the mists like we’re born of them. Craning to watch the comets erupt.
“It’s hard,” Will says for me, eyes on the showers of light, “when someone who might otherwise be a happy person just… can’t, a lot. It’s like a flu of sadness. You try to drink plenty of fluids, try to get your rest, but all you can really do is let it run its course.”
Through Tirzah, Sy nods. “In her way, your author gets sick as often as mine does.”
“It’s pathetic.”
“It really is.”
Will arches a brow. “Take bets on which of ‘em dies first?”
Sy puts his money on my death; Will goes the other way. Winner’s author gets custody of the dead one’s characters.
Like that hadn’t already been agreed upon.
* * *
Back to the house for a New Year’s toast – she, me, her husband makes three, classy glasses of wood-flavored whiskey for all.
I snap pics of her in her hat and sharp jacket, Gandalf’s pipe balanced at the corner of her mouth. She raises the glass. “Happy New Year, old sport.”
“Mm, yes, I say, rather, *bluster-bluff*.”
She laughs at the toothpick I swirl in my drink and contently chew. “Who needs wood whisky when you can have whisky wood?”
A masterpiece of a movie, thanks to my sister’s Netflix. (“The Illusionsist” – you seen it? You may wish to.)
Always cold, but – with three top layers, a beanie, and T’s ski pants over my jeans – almost warm enough.
Always at risk to feel sad and angry and scared that life will swallow me and my inner fog whole, but for now – through the wee hours – happy enough.
* * *
I expect the year will be much like this.
Happy ‘til I’m not, sad ‘til I’m better, my people and me weathering it all like we do.
It will be hard.
Bits will be glorious – pockets of silent music in the mist.
Ever On Word 