I am alone in my bedroom. My lungs are filled and tainted with the smell of incense. Outside, the clouds obscure the sun with their whiteness. I want it to snow. If there were snow, the trees wouldn't look so melancholy. I feel sad for them. I don't like my friends to be unhappy.

I touch my fingertips to the window. The glass is cold and wet. I press harder, as if by pushing against the frost with enough force I can somehow heat the pane and shatter it. I bring my nose to the window, feeling the ice seep through my skin and freezing in my veins. I want to take the burning incense and melt the glass, just a little, just enough to mold it to fit my face, to fill every crevice of my skull, and then freeze it again, so that I am trapped and protected. Or else maybe I'll keep the incense to it, until it turns into scalding liquid to burn my skin off, so I can be pure. I will not scream.

In school we learned that everything can exist three ways. What is the melting point of bones, I wonder. The boiling point of blood? How long would I have to burn before my blood turned to a gas and burst through my skin, until I was only a skeleton, and then even my bones spilled over and rose to the sky, until at last, I rained from the heavens as a new plague to the earth?

If that happened, would I be like a phoenix, burning to rise from the ashes again? Or would I simply be one more lost soul whose destiny was to lose their scream among the stars?

I move away from the window. The cold has suddenly become unbearable.

When I was little, I used to love twirling round and round, watching the universe blur in my eyes, allowing my limbs to succumb to the dizziness, relinquishing all control, closing my eyes to keep the world spinning a little longer, and opening them to come back to reality.

I don't do that anymore. After a while, spinning made me sick.

I turn to the mirror above my dresser. I move closer until my own eyes fill my range of vision, and all I can see are the tiny shards of glinting emeralds that form my irises. My pupils are huge, dilated, black holes for me to fall into, dead space to swallow my voice.

I want my eyes to become diamonds. Emeralds are more beautiful, but diamonds are hard and warm and able to cut, to slice through glass. If they can do that, maybe they can slice through clouds, rip open their bellies and let the snow fall out. I would like to do that, maybe. Except perhaps then there would be no snow left, ever, and we would mourn the loss of our geese and wish they hadn't laid golden eggs.

Then the trees would be lonely until spring.

My eyes are clouded with the fog from my breath. I wipe it away slowly, then walk to my bed and fall into it on my back, my legs dangling like trees uprooted in their adolescence. I could touch the wooden floorboards if I tried, but I am too tired.

The bed is so soft under my spine. Why can't hands be as soft and gentle and supportive? The mattress makes me want to go to sleep, but I can't, even though I know there are heavy circles under my eyes.

What's the matter with me? I'm not usually this tired. Maybe all those nights of lying in bed waiting to sleep, of shivering beneath the blankets, of tossing off the covers that are damp with my sweat, perhaps all those nights have finally taken their toll on me and the sun is giving me the tiredness I lacked all those nights, giving it to me as a gift, giving it to me too late.

My eyes are burning. Can fire melt gemstones? They are not burning with the sweat that threatens to drown them at night, but with water from another ocean. The salty liquid trickles down my cheeks and to my hair. I bring my hands to touch my eyelids. My fingers are so cold. Am I a ghost, a walking skeleton? The cold brings relief to my eyes, but still the water does not stop.

I want to spin until I go so fast that the water flies off my face and I can feel a wind of my own making. But if I do I might break something, or flood my room with tears. Beside, if I am still and unmoving like a tree, I may at last grow vines and leaves and aromatic blossoms to be beautiful and strong like a diamond.

Slowly, I stand up. I blow out the incense; it's making me dizzy. I open the window and the lingering scent exits gracefully. I look outside and see the trees being blown about by a gust of wind, see them letting themselves be moved.

It may be the trees, standing there yet moving. It may be the breeze that feels even colder on my tearstained cheeks, or it may be my achingly chilled fingertips. Perhaps it's the incense that has calmed and aroused me, or just that my cheeks are pale and wet and there are dark stains under my eyes and my eyelashes are too heavy even though it's day, not night. I don't know.

I just know that suddenly I want so desperately to twirl around and force my tears out even if the people suffer from this new plague of deep crimson rain and now I am really moving for the first time in so long and my arms are suspended on the air and yes the tears are there too but they're not blood and they cling to my cheeks until there are no more of them and I am celestial I can see the Earth and the stars are hearing me scream the cry of a phoenix with its cold fire wings and I am shattering out of glass and now my scream is turning into the song of a swan and I am swan phoenix burning ice alone but above all I am my song and now--

Now the nausea doesn't come, and I slow down and stop. My arms fall limply at my sides. I lie back down on the bed, this time lifting my feet on it and lying down in fetal position, like a newborn infant. I can feel my eyelids start to close. My chest rises and falls in a deep, steady rhythm. Through my eyelashes, I can still see the open window. I don't feel the breeze; instead, I am so warm and I can feel my eyes starting to close like they haven't done in far too long. It's all right, though, because at least they are closing now, and I can tell they will stay like this for several hours, and when I open them again, they won't be rimmed with dark marks. They will simply be emeralds alone, unpolished because there is no need to polish them.

Outside, the first sun-tinted flakes begin to fall.

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Notes: Well…those were random thoughts that assembled themselves into my mind. It's not a fic, so I don't have to write a disclaimer! Yay! I would love any feedback for this, so please either review or e-mail romancherubX@aol.com with comments or questions. This story is © Cassandra Lupos 2002. Please, please, please do not post this anywhere else without my permission.