Julia is watching snow fall; it's an ocean. The field across the street has become impossibly distant. Emerald trees cluster there. A single pine stands apart, nearly blotted out by the storm.
Last night she lay awake. The light was off. She shivered under the covers and stared through the old break in the window. She had tried to cover the hole with anything she could find but the wind had knocked down pinned-up comforters one sagging inch at a time. They better served her atop her body, so underneath a small mountain of blankets, unable to get warm, she whispered her name 'Julia.' Her insides were chilled. The dingy lamp flicked on and spilled anemic light across the edge of her mattress. She rolled toward that edge and reached for her journal and a half-broken pencil. On the last blank page she wrote 'Julia.'
Letters drifting in a sea of white.
Her hand has been resting on the handle. As she is turning to go inside the image of the field is sticking to her eyelids. Julia had seen children playing there a season ago. They ran about streaking autumn behind them, twilit earth tones and hidden purples. That memory hurts her in the stomach, then in the chest.
The apartment is an icy tomb. Winter paints the everywhere deep blue and it feels colder than being outside. She hesistates to shut the door behind her. She shuts it and the darkness comes as soft as snowfall. Julia sets her bag down on the kitchen counter and takes off her name tag.
In the bathroom, the shower and the lights turn on. In the brightness she is pulling her shirt over her head and off of her arms. She takes off her shoes, her socks, her jeans. She is sliding her panties down her legs and past delicate ankles; she is trying to take her bra off but her fingers are still cold and clumsy.
Nude in the bathroom mirror, Julia doesn't look at her body. The mole on her left breast is still there, a cinnamon speck on her warm skin tone. The men that had seen it, all but one had kissed it, sought it out as though it were nourishment. Their kisses had been consumptive; sweet cinnamon. But she doesn't look. Julia shuts her eyes and shivers. She is waiting for the shower to warm up.
He had caressed the moist washcloth against her body. Its touch was grainy and warm; it smelled of floral soap. It pressed against her neck and smoothly stroked upward into her jaw line; it swept the curvature of her hips and left a trail of dull tickles. His fingers pressed, her flesh indented, he worked soft circles as though polishing a jewel. When he sat the washcloth on the side of the bathtub and began to suckle her shoulders she cast her eyes sideways. Julia stared at the washcloth longingly.
Sometime after, when autumn had tapped the windows, she reached out of the shower and dried herself in a soft, white towel. In front of the bathroom mirror her feet stuttered to an improvised halt. Julia turned to face it; she pulled the edges of the towel away as though they were newspaper wrapping fine china. After a moment one edge fell away completely. Her hand had let go. She was smiling, she was gently rubbing her palm over the faint bulge in her abdomen and letting her fingers linger like leaves in a slow breeze.
Julia is naked and wet when she comes out of the bathroom. Winter's cold is tolling her body and freezing her hair. The break in the bedroom window is letting the storm in. She goes to it and remembers the end of Fall. She remembers the first time she felt alone, the first time she crossed through the hallway threshold without the bulge and yet another door had closed. It had been a manoevre to evade loneliness. She had watched the children playing in the field across the way; she had struck the window and hysterically sunk to her knees. Now she is standing. Now she is turning away and lying down upon her mattress. Now she is letting the frost seal her eyelids shut.
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