The evening sky is more blue than black. Patches of blue and black, dissolved in a suspension that tries to touch a passer-by every time he looks up. The mist and his hat--- their edge is where he finds his sky. What lies above is the eternal illusion, of the hope to it, and of the despair. 

December has her own appeal with neon lamps and cold winds and hot cakes. But its the cold wind I like and the adequate tension that scatters inside me, through its slightest of touch.

Cold winds and those descending holly leaves....

Cold winds and the saddest of sunlit skies....

Cold winds and the crisp of old books....

Fall comes and I turn back one last time. From February reds to the moist days of June, from a love soaked July to a gentle birthday hymn, only the looking back is all that is there to it. To look back, only, to look back. Cold winds cut inside and meet my nakedness.

What do you find when you look beyond a valley? Homes that are not yours. Children that are not yours. Happiness that is hardly yours. And unhappiness? In that you have had your primal share, to some extent, to some fraction, even though it has retained its ingenuity. The passer-by was there. The mist kissed his hat, it left its immense presence on him. But what formed its weight? I stood above a valley and knew what did form its weight, the mist and all that were above it--- the possibility and its inherent limitlessness. They touched him right there, inches above from his reach was the sky. I knew. Only that he did not. He looked up to find only distance.

One of these days we made love and realized how two people fit into each other. 

First came together all that were alike--- a lip for a lip, a hand for a hand. Patiently they met each other, greeted each other and melted into each other.

Then came their unique waywardness---- one's brevity guarded by another's longer legs, one's open emptiness filled by the density of another. Thus came together all the impatient ones.

And at times in sudden hinders of reality when the lips parted, we wondered how a moment can be so complete yet so brittle.

In downward eyes I thanked pain. I thanked for it let me know it, endure it, conquer it. In the end it came down to the inches between our lips. And all I could think of in that opportune moment was what had once been above the passerby's hat.

The cold winds had remembered how I became a woman, in toss of coins not in elaborate exchanges. That was its misfortune as well as its beauty. The tomorrows have been mostly penniless. Yet on the days when the cold winds came to seek you out within me, I have felt very rich.

There can be no true happiness without pain. That is the irony of it