This White Bed Of Mine
A silent breath whispered the number of snowflakes falling from Heaven. It was hard to keep your eyes open in fear of snow getting into your eyes, and yet, Alessandro stubbornly stared at the sky like it was the enemy of humanity. What was there to fear when his eyelashes would catch the tears of a cloud?
Lying in a fury of snow was never this serious. Lying in the snow never even passed Alessandro’s mind before, and yet there he was, like an angel embraced by a fresh blanket of nothing but white. The whole world was covered in one pure color, from the trees to the colonies of ant hills. Everything seemed so in place except for him, alone, lonely, one. It wasn’t always like this, but what was the point of yearning for something you didn’t even know? What troubled him, though, was that these certain unknown memories kept attacking Alessandro over and over, like moments that weren’t meant to be forgotten. These images weren’t nightmares, no. He never experienced them during the night, even. They were always playing in his mind when he least expected them to, like now, lying on the cold ground, when there was nothing to lull his eyes closed.
Now he remembers, it was a day like this, in an unknown year, in a life Alessandro didn’t remember. His mouth moved on its own, possessed as if he were there now.
* * * *
“Thoughts are meant to be forgotten. So why ask me what I’m thinking about?” He said, with quiet spite, mind you. The other, who was supposed to answer, instead stooped down, kneeling towards the questioner.
“Wouldn't you like it if I knew about you, and you knew about me? We’re friends, after all,” he answers. The questioner looked up at him funny. “Oh, come on, don’t look at me like that, Andro.”
“Alessandro, not Andro,” the man, smoking, said. He was engulfed in smoke, both from the cold and his cigarette, his head empty. The cold was numbing his nose. “ I don’t understand why you act this way.”
“What way, Andro?” His dear friend questioned. Now he was the questioner. “I haven’t done anything to pique your interest.”
“I never said you did,” Alessandro told him. “I just like your art, Ramie. Nothing more, nothing less.“
“Why, ‘cause it’s illegal?” Ramie smiled. Yes, that was his name. Given to him by the woman who bore him and left him the same day. Nothing to pity about. His hair was covered in chunks of snow piling on top of each other, and Alessandro couldn’t help but watch as the frozen tears covered him. He didn’t reply to Ramie, not protesting anymore when the boy sat down next to him.
Up ahead, there was a frozen expansion of a hibernating river. It glistened like a mirror in the sun's light, which peeked its head from the curtains of gray clouds, as if to show mercy to those below. Not that they asked for it. Still, the two men welcomed the short-lived warmth of honey-dew sunlight. One thankful, the other numb in thought. It was silent between them for a while, even as the sun rested in the west, out of sight.
“Being miserable must be a punishment from God,” Ramie said out into the open. He wasn’t addressing me, that much I knew, but what could a person like Ramie feel miserable about? I didn’t ask him.
Instead, I asked, “Do you believe in God?” Now this question felt like I rang a bell over his head, the impact echoing through our consciousness in a hum. I turned to face him just slightly, trying to figure out what he was playing at, but the way Ramie stared out into the vast distance gave nothing away for me to read.
“There has to be something out there, greater than us, to have created all this.” Is what he said, gesturing to the landscape, and I silently agreed with him, content in finally feeling understood. It was difficult to believe in something you couldn’t see, but if that were the case for everything, then what would be the point in having hope? It was reassuring to know that maybe out there, a life better than here was awaiting us, and that our minds just couldn’t comprehend it yet.
“Whoever did create all this is the real artist here,” I muttered to myself, then to Ramie, I said, “Could you paint this, as you did before? I’ll pay you for it.” Ramie finally looked at me, scoffing.
“That’s a high risk for such a kind offer. Where would you even hide the artwork?” He pulled his legs up to his chest, resting his chin on his knees. “Someone will have to have noticed two men exchanging artwork for money like they were drug dealers in a back alleyway.”
“Like how you always do. Hide it in the walls instead of on them.” I quipped back.
“You creeper. How’d you know?” He threw some snow at me, missing in the process. “Mariano told you? That weasel–”
I just laughed at him, throwing my cigarette butt into the snow and burying it. It simmered away like a star dying in the night sky, and I kept my eyes on it until Ramie got up and started walking, more like waddling, down the hill. He offered me a “see you later” rather than a “good-bye”— he didn’t like saying good-bye— and yelled down from the bottom that he’d talk to me about our “drugs” tomorrow, saying it was too cold to sniff powder, anyway.
The moon didn’t appear as I looked back at the sky once more before getting up, and neither did the constellations. Today’s play would not show, like usual. I felt numb again, just this time, not from the cold. I warmed up to Ramie too much today…
So just go home, Alessandro, go home.
* * * *
The sounds around Alessandro were muffled. Maybe the shed of unnecessary snow from the sky finally got to him. After all, he was facing paradise when he closed his eyes, and now he was at his side, chasing the remnants of what used to be Ramie. Alessandro’s face burned with the cold, and he tried to steady his breathing, attempting to wake the lungs that felt frozen with his heart. Was the snow trying to strangle him quietly, suffocate him peacefully, in an attempt not to disturb anyone? How kind of Mother Nature. But no, Alessandro’s eyes opened like a door leading to a new world, a dark one. He gasped and startled, sat up quickly, wincing in the process. How long had he been here, reminiscing in his sleep? Nothing felt warm anymore, not like how it was in his “dream.” The sun wasn’t showing him mercy today. Nobody was. Nothing would be showing mercy. That’s just how reality was.
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