The morning air is so crisp that it crunches between my teeth like glass.  Biting and bleeding.  But my mouth is so numb from the cold that I can only taste the welling copper.  I can’t feel the pain yet.  When I exhale the bloody sand is a pale mist that the wind takes away and the sunlight sparkles within.  

If this aching could feed anything I would be a connoisseur.  There’s an aftertaste of rubbing alcohol and bone dust.  A hint of graveyard dirt.

If spring is for the living then maybe I’m the intruder in the Garden.  Stealing glass apples like I was the first.  I take a bite but there’s nothing it can tell me that I don’t already know.  The Garden was always too kind to us.