He was white
He was white and he was wispy and he chilled my bones
The way the cold morning air fills with fog and seeps into your jacket
Until it’s buried inside of you
He would grab my hand and he would slip through my grasp
Tendrils of smoke swirling around me
But he wasn’t always wispy and he wasn’t always gone
He started as a thick creamy white
Rich and deep, like pools of color being reflected through a prism of glass
His words like clouds, thick with emotion
Thick with rain
Heavy with meaning
And then little by little, he thinned
We thinned
Our hope thinned
Our future thinned
Just words back and forth, vanishing air, shallow, and dry
Shadows of white
Until one day, I put my heart in his airy hands and he couldn’t hold its load
It slipped through his grip and shattered into ten white marble pieces
The pieces were solid and he was air
He looked at the ground with chilling fear and he looked at the sky with gaunt skin
And he looked at me with remorse
And then he knew, too, that he was only air
And I was a suffocating, rich smoke
We mourned with the breeze
And just as smoothly as he had filled my lungs, he floated away