Filthy Animals

cold chill that turns the room bluish in its light

Fire spreads through her veins

Charles and opened his mouth, but his voice was snatched away on the wind. Charles turned to him, smiled.

“What did you say, Lionel?”

gray smear of other lights, yellow and red and white, all of them blending until they were indistinct

cold air against his face seemed to open, leaving a cavity that was warm and hollow, deeper down in the flow of air. He pressed his face into it as if into a clear stream, and he could feel the cold rushing out and away, sliding past him

sound of rain striking the tin of the outhouses. The perfect, succulent light of late summer in the cabins, riddled with dust motes. Running between the trees. Rain, so much rain. Their papers covered in scrawl, their handwriting silly, messy. The trim beards of the counselors. Their
warm hands steering Lionel, age five, a scraped knee on the gravel path, down to the canoes, where they were forbidden to

winter wasn’t this deep

cold black air that he could scarcely imagine

Grotesque, but beautiful, too

sky was iridescent with cold.