When the snow lies like a second skin and the box elder and the cottonwood hang low beneath this slippered desert moon, then frost and sky are two opposing mirrors. When my tooth-long shadow ripples dune and striated, sleeping rock, the sky seems troubled too; no comet stirs the clouds, and the burn brighter than the fossil streams frozen upon these striped-rock walls like tears.

The desert is a land I have long-cherished. Rippling in the heat as in the cold, choking breath beneath its winding sands, it is the natural home for such a one as He who carries bones upon his back, souls within his weather-tattered coat. Beneath his little bud of moon and all these scattered stars, I could forget myself. I could walk across these sleeping sands and brush my sulfrous metacarpals through the bearded rabbit brush yellow on yellow ‘til icicles ring a frightened Dies Irae. I remember now a distant memory; a young man running through the snow, cold needling his puckered heels ‘til he collapsed for his devouring. I stop my pacing and recall my own demise the first of many where I would preside; the numbing frost, the swirling winds, at last the limbic warmth deep in my cerebellum, twisting like a worm inside a skull.

Of course, my feet no longer feel the cold; I am of it now, it knows me for its master. Nevermore will ice and brittle snow break beneath my heels. In any land, in every land, I travel solitary, leaving no hollow steps to mark my place. This is most true of wintertime, when ice gathered close, like quilts on cracking joints and the wolf’s nose turns at a bell-fall of ice. My lips have fallen from me long ago, but smiles hang on me still. My jaundiced teeth are fixed into a grin sure as graves run in a broken row, yet I would smile of my own accord tonight, if and I could. For now, when lean paws stake the bending trees and the sky shines through my ribs like mercury, I am gone a-courting.

Just over this hilltop sloping with December, there is a burned-out barn. Here the bending trees sweep in the wind and breath hangs in ropes on rafters. Here there sounds a pulse, rumbling low as mountain silence. It is said that foxes, serpents, all low-crawling creatures smell decay before it happens. Yet I am keener still; I taste each dying pulse upon the air and feel it judder through my worried feet. The one inside will not tarry long.

So, I pass the hay crib rotting in its sleep, the upended plough, an archaic barrow spilling ice and rust into a slough of ice. Unhinged, the door offers no complaint at my passing but to split itself upon the ground. The splintering would wake a healthy man, but this youth is not healthy. Pale like the snow when it decides to melt, he is yet feverish. Still, he must sleep here, for there is no choice. There is no more friendly hearth, no piping kettle, no mother’s quilt to warm his cracking joints and make him dream of broad-hipped brides. Nothing but a black square underneath the snow where bricks and white pine foundations jut like decayed teeth. Ash now, all ash, all ashes, but this barn’s skeleton and he who is fast becoming one.

He is still so soft my fingers hesitate to press. But in all things I must pace with the clock, and it strikes now. Time runs shorter than his lingering.

If I fail to speak, it will be past and I will pace the years alone, as I have been

before remembrances.

I drop my jaw, and he is awake. Words come unrehearsed as a final breath.

Don’t be afraid.

I am the thing you know you are beneath your flesh. I know because I was once abandoned too, thrown to the wasteland then by loss and this world’s error, were the Grey One slipped me into his great bag and sucked my breath with his great straw.

I know because I was once the thing you are, naked beneath wool blankets steeped in old manure and dried blood. Horse-smells. So, so. I was once a groom as well. You wear it as you wear your name, my youth. I know because, like you, I once had breath. Like you I once was taken up and carried off.

No. Don’t move. There’s nowhere you can run when I am called, no stone I can’t unturn, no latch I cannot spring. Please. If it lasts long, it will go hard. Despite what you have heard, I’m not so cruel. I would rather sweep a spider into dust than stamp it ‘neath my heel. So, so, lie back. Lie back, young man, lie back. Cover yourself, smell this rich stable air. Like that, yes. Just like that.

You are alive. You curl against your fate like smoke. It’s beautiful.

If I asked kindly, could I sit by you? Your bed is warm; I like that in a bed, for mine is not so nice. Wide as a nave and draped with satin sheets just so, thick with pillows as a roof with icicles. I sleep in a granite cathedral far to the North of here, further than the burning tower of the Prince of Winds and that great Polar land whipped round with clamshell lights. Further than time, further than the raging air itself – there! There lies my island in a sea frozen thick with clavicles and sunken ships. It is a high walled thing, four miles by five and seventy miles up, past the point where the air breaks. Here where the clouds are thickest, here I make my home.

Behind the ruin of my battlements there is a garden, blasted long before I received the keys and took my lonely place as regent. But it was bare centuries before your birth, when I received this mantle and this scythe from my grey predecessor. My garden is a twisted thing of snow and jewel-flowers. There are four walls deep with glass-cold ruby buds. I am told they once were poppies. These lie three rows by five, behind the fountain, its jets now choked into great pearls. At the center, deep within weeds sharpened into emerald swords, there stands a tree five hundred rings deep. This too is petrified, its peaches shriveled into aventurines. Alone I sit beneath its branches. Alone I pace the single frosty path that leads nowhere and everywhere at once. For all roads end behind these garden walls. They all pass through, kings as well as serfs. All those born and not born, they will pass through as well. And yet, though they have tarried but awhile in my dead garden, all have at last moved on, their footprints lapped up by the wind.

Stay awhile and listen. Please. There is nowhere for you but this path, no one for you but me. And still, you are so lovely in your lonesomeness, so much like me when I was in the flesh…

Like you, I had no choice to come to this. One day, I simply was. I grew up like you, dirt hiding in the creases of my flesh, my hair reflecting the desert’s dawn. I ploughed the fields, I fed the cows, I shoed the foal and mucked the stables head down, “yes sir”, from the dawn of my first step until I lay in a midnight sweat. But then the moon was bright in winter, and I longed to roam. The world was so much wider than my hay crib, and the desert – I thought that it might speak. But I did not note the swirling clouds. They rolled from the mountains’ shoulders like a cape; soon I had lost my footing, warmth and way.

Then He entered, parting the swirling snows, eyes like candle wicks hands long as January when it lingers. He tapped his wand against my ear and motioned. I was so warm then I almost thought I dreamed, and yet my feet were light upon the snows. No wind stirred my hair. The souls that I have taken say they are in pain. There is remorse, regret, a thousand several losses I cannot care to hear. But for me there was lightness only as I left my master’s farm, my motherless house, and followed Him down paths carved with cart wheels, through hill and forest, over stone and stream ‘til ice broke in the sea and my island was the world.

It was all so very long ago, before the noise and clamor of this spinning century. Yet I remember that Grey One better than my breathing days, my back bent beneath the hay bale, my feet shoeless, splintered. I remember His coming and goings over sky and sea, the sweep of His crook through bitter air, the gleam upon his teeth. I remember last his hands, cold yet inviting, as He stretched me on my back and then himself.

But even Death cannot remain so long. Unlike this sands that wind in heat and snow, there is no sameness in Him. In one age he will ride a pale horse through thatched towns, sweeping out the red-ringed corpses like so much dust. In another, he will trip through steel-doored neighborhoods, a tall-backed stranger in bowler and red cape, grinning merrily, black spats tapping ragtime as he unlocks doors. As his narrow bones twined through my thighs, I felt how thin he was, his perforated like limestone, calcite sloughing from his joints like scales. He bent his neck to look at me a bit. Please, said his eyelessness. He craved the sleep I sought when I collapsed in my hay, muscles strained from the hoe and creaking cart. On my back, I wound my arms through his own and held him though his ribs groaned with my weight. A kiss upon his jaw, I let him release. He crumbled in me like so much sand and chalk.

It is so strange, the things Death can recall. As I emerged that night from his cold chamber, I looked down to find these feet of bone, these gaping calves and wrists. As I looked out across the sea that day, I released my name into the ice. There it remains still, as if it were but asleep.

But oh, my lad. Oh, my beauty. Do not think that I am dead to everything. I still remember flesh, and I remember hands. And I remember heat and legs, and you…you are so very, very beautiful. And I remember loneliness too well.

But over all, I still remember sleep. How I long to rest inside two pulsing arms and never wake again.

But then, that is for you, for time is now upon us. You face a path. As I was lead, I’ll lead you through the fields slivered by dawn, down roads spliced by wagons, past hill and trees and past all things until there is no past or future tense. Until our feet break glaciers and we stand where gardens, bed and home, all are well-prepared, all quieter than stones. You have no choice in walking, yet this I grant: when we reach my island, you may continue. You may walk until you are smaller than a snowflake, thinner than mist. You may walk until you reach the river swirling down, the stairs that spiral through the firmament. You may walk until the boatman takes your hand, and takes as payment the dirt beneath your nails.

You may walk ‘til then, or stay with me, as I once did for Him. You are so warm. If so, I would break rubies and emeralds from their stalks and lay them in your footprints, warm still with life and memory. We would watch them quicken and unfold, themselves again. I would break you peaches for a feast, and drop your hair with diamonds. You would shake, and they would fall, harmless as rain. Then I would take your hand and lead you through the columns and the broken pediments. I would lead you to my bed and lie you down and there…

Oh, my boy. Please let me sleep again.

He hesitates, as I once did when He I loved held out His hand and asked. But there is something in his eyes that savors more of want than resignation. He clasps my hand and kisses these splitting knuckles so sweetly, as if they were a pair of flushing lips.

As if they were his lover’s.

He takes my hands and whispers. What he says I cannot hear over the kicking wind. He smiles and he repeats it ‘til I can.

I am lonely, too.

He takes my brittle hand and leads me through the snow. We leave no mark, abroad though we are in some great desert, I will never see again. As we tread the land he holds me close, whispers against my shining skull how he will bathe my broken toes with care, let his kisses fall like rain upon my shoulders so they’ll seep into the soil, perhaps to raise a calalily up in an eternal winter.

We walk and the wind smiles in our wake, scrubbing out all traces of our path as we pass on.