Still

The chilly November wind bit him as he stood at the edge of the lake, staring across at nothing, at everything, waiting. Speechless was his mouth, and quiet was his soul for this brief eternity of a moment. He wished he could stop thinking in paradoxes, but that was how he felt. One big fat contradiction. Hypocrite. The wind rushed by. He pulled his coat a little tighter.

Around him the seasons were changing. The leaves were turning and falling, round and round in a seemingly endless, cacophonous dance. Their last expression of life before their death. He turned his eyes up to the sky, filling them with the chilly gray of the cloud-sheet above him, wrapping himself in it. The gray sank into his bones, sending a chill down his spine. It was a nice feeling. He pulled his coat a little tighter.

And then it wafted across his nose, in the wake of the incessant wind. His eyes faded quickly, sealing him with the color of the sky. The smell was brief; it probably was not even real. But it was enough, the wispy trail of a memory that was too heavy to bear with confidence. He turned on his heel as if pushed around by the wind as it does to the dancing leaf. Forget it. He pulled his coat a little tighter.

His legs moved up the uneven sidewalk, stirring the leaves to dance around them, the tired ones crunching underneath his shoes. The wind continued to nip around him like a small dog that hungered for dinner, and he pretended to ignore its quietly adamant wining, continuing up the sidewalk. The ground was hard underneath his feet and pushed back through his shoes and into his femur, springing him forward. At least it was still warm inside of his coat. He pulled it a little tighter.

He was not alone, but he was the only one moving, besides the leaves. The people around him were still, frozen in the November air, parting the wind as it blew round and round them. The faces could have been anybody's, and they were just as gray as the sky above him, and just as hard as the ground beneath him, pushing back through his shoes and into his femur, springing him forward. He longed for the soft warmth of his home, but for now he was caught in a subtle trick of God, a moment hung up in the metronome of time. He pulled his coat a little tighter.