Too Far Gone

The wind raises goosebumps along his bare skin. It dances between his fingers, tugs at his hair, pushes him forward. It's too cold to be doing this, he knows. But he can't see the snow and not think of her. He clutches numbly to the guitar with one hand, stretching his other arm out into the wind. The magic's still out there somewhere, it's just a matter of finding it.


When he was seven, still learning his notes, he would sit by the fire and clumsily pluck at the strings of the guitar. He'd stare into the flickering light until he heard her whisper behind him, "It's like magic." Then he'd feel her warm breath on his ear and hear the words, "Let's go outside."

She became synonymous with the bitter taste of winter air, the lingering sound of guitar, the magic.

Her favorite activity used to be pulling fallen pinecones out from underneath their blankets of snow. The two of them would roll them around in the powder and marvel at the tracks they left behind; they would throw the broken pieces at the fence across the yard; they would bring them into the warmth of the firelight and cover them with glitter before they buried them again under their pine tree.

She used to say that winter cast a spell on the world. "The trees know all about it," she'd tell him. "That's why they drop their cones into the snow."

When he was nine, they were in the same class in school for the first time. She sat with her friends and laughed. He sat with his friends and realized just how upset he was that she was across the room.

And then she was back again. "Let's go find some magic," she said, her smile glittering with frost.

When he was fourteen, he read somewhere that winter was the loneliest of seasons, because no one could bear her cold looks or her frozen smile. She was beautiful but numb, never able to experience the summer's warmth. Never able to fall in love.

He wrote her a song about it, about how someone might set the girl free. He curled up in the warmth of the fire and drank lukewarm cocoa and sang about love, about buried pinecones and melting ice.

He would sit by the fire, as lonely as winter, letting the melody dance between his fingers.
Her magic became his music, but she never heard the song. She was too far gone. Her world wasn't his to share anymore. She had no more interest in pine cones, and glitter wasn't worth the time. She had left him sagging next to their pine tree long ago.

When he was sixteen, his sister took a sip of her coffee and said, the girl's not worth it. His fingers played the same familiar notes over and over again, and he knew she was lying.


In the duskiness of his memories, thoughts of her cascade into each other. Sitting on couch, watching the snow fall beyond the window. Running through the backyard. Hearing her laugh. The way she had turned his days around. Bits and pieces of her magic constantly floated through the dusty recesses of his mind, fragmented but glittering. His arms ache; he doesn't want to let her go, but pull her in tighter. When he looks out at their pine tree, he can still see shadows of her from the corners of his eyes.