i live alone/Em von der Ruhr

I slip out of bed upon realization of my open curtains. The stale winter air that hovers undisturbed in the vacant void that is my bedroom feels hollow around my exposed ankles. I never wear socks to sleep, I just can’t muster the feeling of them against my scratchy sheets. It’s like dry skin catching on burlap: uninviting.

 I tiptoe across the cold wooden floorboards, each icy step inviting unrest into my sleep-deprived eyes. I reach the window: the bare winter forest a mile out from the cabin, the howling wind threatening to crack the spine of each tree, the week-old crunchy snow and ice creating craters around unknown footprints. My toes feel so numb, the longer I stand on the floorboards, the more it feels like the cold forms fingers and hands, grabbing hold of each toe tight with its icy grip, and snapping each one up towards the flat, bony metatarsals in line with them; snapping them like frosted twigs. 

The forest has eyes. Dark, glowing eyes. They hypnotize me to keep standing, despite how bitter I feel, despite how dry my eyes get from unwavering: refraining from blinking, despite how I begin to sense something crawling in the vacant space around the bedroom, causing my hair to stand on edge straighter than the cold did. I hear the static of silence, it infests my ears becoming louder with each chilling second, louder and louder until the trees chime in; they are screaming, screaming because of the way the wind threatens how much longer they will stay standing, how much longer until wild animals gash at their trunks and the rich syrup inside them spills like blood–then the wind is screaming too, screaming back at the trees, screaming its threats; the wind is more powerful. The cold turns to fire, seeping through the calloused skin on my feet; it stings, like walking on a floor made of a million sewing needles. My jaw quivers, my legs have goosebumps, I turn towards my bed to escape the screams, the fire and needles, the eyes of the dark that bore holes through my chest. 

My eyes land on empty floorboards. My bed has moved. It has rotated 90 degrees and shifted to the left a few feet. However, I live alone.