To Cold to Cry

            The common room was warm. The glowing flickering fire lit the room, making it both light and dark. It was stark contrasts to the terrible cold outside. The doors opened inward, bringing forth both a man but also icy fingers of an early snow.

            The man took off his coat leaving it on a lone wooden peg. He moved to his regular seat. He moved slowly because his bones still ached from the frigid tempter. It was a common place open to all, but he had begun thinking of this seat as his own. He realized that such a musing was bizarre, considering that he had lost so much already. Was it rational to claim something that had never been his in the first place?

            The woman sat across from his seat, as if she had been waiting for him. How could she have known he would be here? Was she here every night even when he wasn’t?  She looked up form her tea and said “It has been a long time.”  Her voice was warm and full of greeting.

            “It has.” His reply chilly and numb. Cold but not directed towards her. He mumbled and waited for the waitress to bring him his beverage. The man had changed since she had seen him last. His facial skin was tight and flushed, though that could just be due to the cold. His eyes were red and blood soaked.

            The waitress knew what he would want to drink and delivered it without an order. She finished her tea and was nearly done with a second cup, they had yet to say a single word beside their greetings. Finally she told him. “You have been crying.”

            It was not easy for a man, any man to admit that he had been crying, least of all him. She knew that. He was proud, and strong. He felt he should never admit to a weakness any weakness. He had to be strong for the others. “It is not shameful.” She said softly. “It is not a weakness but a release, and after all that you had been through, you have earned your tears.”

             His cheeks blushed with shame. He looked down into his drink. “For months I couldn’t cry…Not until today.”  It had hurt him too much. Then today it all came rushing out, warm salty tears that stung his face. He steeled himself; he wasn’t going to lose his composure in a public place and not before his only friend.

            She looked down, she knew how much he hurt and how injured his pride was now. Sipping the last bit of her tea, giving her self to make sure she worded this the best way she could, then she asked. “Have you heard the saying…To cold to snow.”

            He was a transplant form warmer climes, the idea that it could literally be to cold to snow seemed alien and counterintuitive to him. Wasn’t snow the embodiment of cold? It was not until he reached the fringed mountains that had he realized that literally it could be to cold to snow.  He mumbled that he had heard that before.

            She moved her saucer a have rotation, just to give her something to do as she formulated the words. “When the snow finally comes, we know that it means that it is getting warmer. And that even though it is still cold, eventually the warmth will return. Sometimes when the tears finally come, after months of hurting so much, that you can’t cry at all, it means that it is begging to get better. That you are begin got heal. That even it doesn’t feel that way, the pain is subsiding. It is still there but its hold on our heart is weakening.”

            And he knew she was right.