In muted resolve the sky pastes thick, blue robes against the horizon. The mountains thrust their peaks into the rich blue, where the snow sets a welcomed contrast. Down runs an avalanche in a hurry to rip across steep slopes – a mad rush; from where I stand a quiet parade. I hum Whitman’s words – „all goes onward and outward, nothing collapses“ – and carefully close the window to the world. My gaze is a slow trance, a waltz in time. Outside and inside meet on the face of my blinking shutters. The sun rushes waves through a multitude, gives rise to the avalanche and rests unsettled against my window blinds, begging for entry.

In my hearth I watch another display of heat. A sun basking in strict confines, human inflicted but unquestionably free in its own right. Fire. It punctuates the rhyme of life nurturing me far beyond my body’s call for warmth. It is a gentle touch to my soul, a loving percussion mimicking the care of a mother for her child, a hand-locked cradle in hushed sway. I fold forward and curl into myself to faintly brush the word peace into the ash collecting around my feet. My finger is slick with soot, grey and black remnants of the lick of fire. I spell each letter with slow, monotonous strokes, timeless in their enchantment.

All the while sky has turned to shades of yellow and orange and red, remarking the arrival of night. The dark moves sun’s reach off my window ledge, lets itself in, drapes my shoulders, provides rest and sidles with me to watch the last glints shiver before falling still. The five letter word has long slipped into me or out of me, there is no telling. I doze off before my mind wiggles thoughts into answers.