Glacial

We move unobstructed through a frozen desert— desolation which welcomes, indiscriminately, fools like us with open arms, roaring heat and blinding light. Unfounded confidence and a thirst for what comes next drives our feet forward and our heads up. Ice and snow crunch beneath our boots as we cross shallow streams of vivid blue Etched, stark, against brilliant white. The sun sears my already burnt skin from above and below, and my eyes, overwhelmed, do not see. I, despite the dull ache in my back the sting of cold wind on my lips the numbness in my toes and my blinded eyes, am lost in the absence of thought. I'm not in a happy place, nor am I uncomfortable. If anything, I am nothing, my mind nowhere— blank as the snow around me. Yet when the cold air yanks me back to the present, nothing turns to cold and cold to exhilaration. Out here, in this frozen desert, with nothing below my feet but ice and nothing before me that I can see— out in this Great Land North where the sun never sets, endings do not exist. Thus I cannot help but to wonder what it would be like to live my life as such, unrestrained by beginnings and ends, Hoping to cease not till death.