something living dies in december.

someone once told her that white was the true color of death. black, misconception of the still-living, the color of true sadness. because when the sad creeps around, it doesn’t paint your walls blue. it eats you from the inside out, leaves your flesh and bone black, your body the depressive cavity to hold the melancholy, and you don’t cry anymore after that. then, with a contemplative puff of the cigarette caught between his index and middle finger, you turn pale, and die.

eight oh one. he’s walking, a little faster than when he left the house, not fast enough to run. the clock is ticking on the second floor, where he will file paperwork for the majority of the day. his boss rounds the corner so he breaks into a sprint. hangs his coat on the first bar, still damp from the snow. eight oh five.

it’s bleak, the winter. lonely holidays. she winds her scarf around her neck a little tighter, a little tired. there’s no point in making a noose, kind of sad. life still has a good twenty year rebate for her. ten forty-seven, three cups of coffee, black as hell, sugarless as fuck. presentations and event planning tucked beneath her arm, stained with inconsiderate ink smudges. it’s bleak, and kind of sad.

what do you want me to do? his fingertips ghost over her upturned wrist, sensitive flesh tensing at his touch. she turns her eyes elsewhere.

nothing. because she’s strong, oh-so-strong, and god forbid someone save the damsel.

she hangs her coat on the second bar, slick from rain. the sleeves drip into the polka-dotted rain boots she places beneath all that, scarf haphazardly thrown on top, rainwater seeping into the wool. carelessness, she’ll realize when she has to go home with wet socks and a freezing neck. the files stayed dry, but she didn’t. black coat next to her yellow one. she won’t look at it. owner working overtime. she gets to go home on time in soaking clothes. maybe she should work overtime too. she hangs her coat on the second bar.

he’s a hopeless romantic with charts and numbers and he stays late to reconcile this love affair. at nine twenty-nine, he looks up and finds a light still on somewhere. he sits up a little, eyes peeking above the restrictive barriers of his workspace, and sees her still typing, coffee next to her laptop. he smiles and continues to woo the data with a fresh excel document, as all hopeless romantics appeasing their lovers do.

no one asked you to start this. she’s tired again, like she is a lot lately. he can hear it in her voice, let’s not do this again. but they have to, he thinks. they have to, he knows.

what happens if we sit here and do nothing? he yells. she hates when he raises his voice. slams the door when he comes home. it makes her more tired, less enthusiastic. what happens to us, what happens to our future together?

she’s quiet. he’s walking away and she says it, all to a different effect. no one asked you to start this, and she’s crying a little.

he notices she only stays when it rains. it begins with a mental checklist: tuesday, thursday, monday, wednesday. not tuesday again for another two weeks. the days grow greyer and he starts walking her out of the office at eleven oh six. he fetches his coat from the first bar, she the second. she laughs a lot when he chivalrously offers a week-old newspaper to cover her head. sends her off to the bus stop and she looks gleaming, scintillating, water drops on bus windows as they pass beneath stop lights. he notices she only stays when it rains, the special days, that the rain brings them together.

how do workaholics fall in love? she assumes this is the phenomenon her assistant keeps asking her about, his coffee deliveries for her at eight, never a minute late, black as hell, sugarless as fuck. they’re no nonsense, or at least she’d like to say so. she never wanted the messy, the lethargic, the lingering. they’re business, as much as love can be, as romantic as a seven o’clock traffic, laughing at contradicting weather predictions, her scarf around both their necks, pulled a little tighter. this is how workaholics fall in love, she would like to answer, six points in tow, powerpoint presentation. nothing snags, so nothing breaks.

the night he leaves, she’s working overtime.

the morning she comes back, he’s gone, and everything falls to hell.

the rain starts back up, cold weather turning them pale.

and who would be able to cut both of them open and assess the damage, if the sad got inside, if they were blanched because something died, not because of the december dry?

puddles don’t form in her boots.

he hangs his coat up three blocks away, ten floors higher.