“Thought I’d find you here.”

I hear her. I refuse to really listen. My trajectory takes me right past her, but I refuse to alter course, to acknowledge her presence. I don’t want to admit the connection or any connection for that matter.

“Do you know what time it is? It’s…”

A train rumbles in the distance, not loud enough to really obscure her pronouncement of temporal certitude. I pay it more heed than its due. Something should be noted, I suppose, even if just the passing of an iron behemoth, another soulless sojourner. I can feel its steely breath in the cold wind evading the trees to find my cheeks.

“She didn’t…”

There’s more in the pause than any words she could have mustered.

“Well god, Marcus, she wouldn’t have wanted this.”

I stop. For a second the familiar pain pricks my heart. My focus flows downward, to my feet, slowly turning to screaming as the assault of wet and freezing seeps to the bone. I let it. I revel in it. It consumes me and blocks her out, lets her be gone.