Ice forming on edges

Sometimes the banks of the James River were silver, and sometimes they were brown...it depended on the light and the time of the day.

Sometimes they were white, if enough snow had fallen and if the air had cooled enough to keep the ice and the snow slightly melted together and reformed throughout the day.

He had kissed her goodbye lightly...on the porch while the others were inside and warm.  The afternoon was a cold humidity, slight pebbles of mist and the sun was like an erased mark smudged against the sky.  There would be no sunsets...just a gray and then a black.

Her lips crumpled gently under his, like the weight giving in to pressure...they were warm.  But they didn't separate, didn't invite any invasion to explore or to relinquish.  Rather, they formed and met his and then returned to their prior state.  He had felt this before.

It was like kissing a smile, but not a laugh.

Definitely saying a goodbye, versus a welcome.

But it was all he had, and for the brief cold moments in the day it was all he needed.

Her barely there.

Not a collapse against him, not a pull of his head towards hers...rather it was just a sweet isolated moment.  Not a collision...but rather when a boat sidles up to a dock and barely nudges the pilings, a glancing blow.

Despite the fact that the pilings are designed to hold the boat, protect it from drifting away in a storm, drifting away in a tide.

He wasn't sure if he was the boat or if he was the piling...but either way it was a glance against each other.

The James River looked silver then...her eyes were darker than a brown he had known and her hands were cold.

Inside of him there was a color of red and orange from a fire that burnt scaldingly...regardless of her tight-lipped kiss.

As he walked away he tried inhaling the cold air...trying to lower the temperature of the insides of him as quickly as he could walk away.