Bold black letters stare up at me from the white page and then jumble before my eyes, mixing up the words, the sentences, that I have been writing since early this morning.
If there's a better way of telling my story, I don't know it. Yesterday I stood in my yard, looking out across the pastures to three white baby goats. As if on cue, they commenced their high-pitched bleating. The yearling ram with his thick, black fur and milk white tail standing looked at me challengingly. I stared back before turning around to go back into the house.
And here I still sit.
It was only four days ago that I returned home from Jamison Mines without you. Frozen and numb I drove home blindly, letting myself be hypnotized by the freeway markers, afraid that if I let your face surface in my mind that I'd crash. Though recalcitrant as usual, you parade now in the fore of my vision, allowing me to bask in the torment of your loss.
Outside the window I see your station on the deck. There you watched the fields with sharp black eyes, never missing the stray black and white cat, Tuxedo Man, that used to drink milk from our porch before you came to us. Tuxedo Man became a stranger to us, but I wonder now, against my will, if he will return in your absence.
Your absence dilates like a gaping black hole in the center of that white-out day. It didn't feel like day at all, or night. There was only snow, continuing in an even sheet from my feet into the sky. I felt my pack pull me back as I struggled for balance on a terrain I couldn't see. I stepped forward and slid down onto my knees, painfully wrenching an already sprained ankle. Gasping, I looked up to call you, expecting you to be nearby. Directly ahead I saw your white shape dart through the trees, the only contrast to your milk-white fur. I called again, my voice shushed by the snow. My throat felt hollow and cold. I swallowed hard, rising up, jerking myself towards the trees. I called your name. I called and called, staggering along.
Later, in my tent beneath the trees I knew you had finally won. I saw before me your black almond eyes, victorious, against the ice white of your face. That night I cried pitifully, imagining that you regretted having gone too far and that you searched for me. I awoke the next morning with swollen eyes and cold joints and looked at the sun coming up over the mountains. The light erased black shadows in the creases of the snow until the ground sparkled incandescently. The peaks mimicked the graceful arch of your ears.
When I returned home I told no one what happened. I felt paralyzed, and even now I cannot speak. And so I write, imagining your final resting place, your brave end without fear as your white form sank down, slowly covered by silent snow.
