Zima

The children were asleep. I waited for him to find his way home again, the hearth his beacon calling. The storm would come in the early hours of the morning; we wouldn’t hear the stars falling. I stoked the fire, the sound of a bull’s bellow drifting in and out of my consciousness. I poured a glass of red wine for my lover, my friend.

As I resigned my hope to receive him from the long hunt—it had been two weeks—the door cracked open. Its sound startled the silence.

No words filled the space between us, but we danced. When his blue eyes met mine, we sat at the old table with knit-lace on top. We sipped the wine and knew that the paucity of the hunt imperiled our subsistence.

Zima, Zima,

Your cloak of white reveals the truth.
What is true?

*the word 'zima' means winter in Slavic languages