Fireworks In Frozen Hands [Wreath]
The sidewalk has given up pretending it is safe, glazed in a thin coat of stubborn winter that laughs at the idea of traction,
Every step is a negotiation with gravity, car tires whisper past like cautious conspirators, their headlights sweeping over salt scars and lost confetti embedded in the cracks from a party you did not attend,
Your breath leaves your mouth in soft white ghosts that immediately forget you, curling up to the streetlights before they die on contact with the cold,
And beside you, your hand is threaded through another hand that fits a little too well for you to call this casual and a little too loosely for you to claim it out loud as anything more.
Above, the sky is pretending it is a war zone for joy.
First one rocket streaks upward, shrieking its opinion of silence,
Then explodes into red shrapnel that blooms over the apartment rooftops,
Followed by gold and green and that one low burst that sounds like someone slammed a door on the year’s last nerve,
The booms roll down the street, bouncing off brick and glass, shaking old resolutions from their sleep.
Their fingers squeeze yours on instinct when the larger booms hit,
You tell yourself it is just a reflex against the noise and not a referendum on whether you are a safe place to anchor in this ridiculous weather,
The cold has turned both your noses pink and numb; their scarf smells like laundry soap and a little like whatever they drank earlier,
You can feel the tremor of a shiver run through their arm, traveling down to the web of your fingers where all the small stories live that you have not told yet.
You have known them long enough to remember summers where fireworks meant mosquito bites and plastic lawn chairs and cheap beer in damp grass,
Where the only thing between you was a shared joke and the occasional nudge of shoulders in the dark when someone tripped over a picnic blanket,
Now it is winter and the city is wrapped in a hard shell of frost and burnt powder,
You are standing close enough that your coats brush every time you shift weight on the compromised sidewalk,
And the hum of the crowd on the corner is far enough away that this stretch of concrete feels like a compromise between public space and private confession booth.
Someone down the block yells the year as if it can hear and might change its mind,
A group of strangers cheer back, the sound raw and hopeful, the way a throat sounds when it is tired of crying and chooses to sing instead,
A dog barks in pure outrage at the sky trying to kill everyone with color,
A stray spark drifts down, fizzles out mid fall, as if even fireworks have second thoughts.
In the middle of all that noise, there is this small, ridiculous quiet between your palms.
You become suddenly very aware of every callus, every scar, the way your thumb fits perfectly into the shallow curve between their thumb and forefinger,
You wonder if they can feel your pulse trying to sprint out of your wrist,
Or if the cold has numbed them enough that your panic is just another anonymous rhythm under the fireworks.
A white burst cracks overhead, raining faint glitter that never reaches you,
Your faces tilt up out of habit, eyes tracking the explosion like you might find a message there that justifies the whole expensive spectacle,
Instead you get nothing but afterimages stamped on your retinas,
Bright rings that drift across the dark like ghost halos for misfit saints.
They laugh at a especially loud boom, a startled sound that turns into a grin,
Turn their head toward you, cheeks flushed, eyelashes jeweled with tiny ice crystals that formed while you were both busy pretending this is just another outing,
You make a joke about how if you slip and go down, they are going down with you because you refuse to die alone on this stupid patch of sidewalk tonight,
They squeeze your hand again, harder now, and say that is the deal they are most willing to sign all year.
You think about all the ways you have practiced not needing anyone,
About the nights you watched fireworks from a window alone, commentary provided by your own skull,
The way the explosions always sounded a little like promises and a little like warning shots,
How you told yourself you were fine with that, that independence and isolation were just two different words for the same kind of safety.
Now, standing here with their glove pressed awkwardly against your bare knuckles because they lent you the usable pair and kept the thinner ones for themself,
You start to suspect that maybe safety has been misbranded,
Maybe it is less about being untouched and more about having someone whose hand you can grip when the whole sky starts shouting for no good reason.
A rocket goes off from a backyard nearby, launched by someone who has no business handling fire of any kind,
It careens sideways, bursts lower than intended, making the people at the corner scatter and shriek with delighted alarm,
You both instinctively step closer into each other, shoulder against shoulder, your joined hands pulled tight between you like a shared secret,
You feel their chest shake with laughter against your arm, and the sound threads through your ribcage like a fuse looking for something gentle to set off.
In that flash lit up moment, you catch their profile against the red wash of light,
Jawline sharp, mouth soft, eyes reflecting the chaos above in fractured color,
They glance back at you and you are both caught staring,
The kind of glance that overshoots casual and lands somewhere near confession,
Long enough to say, I see you, short enough to pretend it never happened when the next boom covers it.
You could speak right now, if you wanted.
You could shout over the thunder of fireworks and traffic and distant countdowns,
Spill every line you never sent in texts, every almost compliment you swallowed,
Tell them that you do not know what the new year holds but you are greedy enough to want their hand in every single scene.
Instead, you stay quiet and hold on.
Not out of fear, at least not entirely,
But because this moment already feels full, packed to the brim with unspoken words and shared warmth that defies the wind clawing at your ears,
As if saying anything out loud might tilt the balance and send you both skidding across the ice into something you cannot walk back from.
A cascade of gold spills down from a high burst like molten rain frozen mid fall,
The crowd hoots, someone sets off a car alarm on accident,
Your breath syncs for a few seconds, your chests rising and falling at almost the same pace,
You do not know if they notice, but you do, and it lands somewhere tender in you that had started to numb over with the rest.
The finale arrives, as it always does, in a wild, overcompensating rush.
Fireworks sprint upward in overlapping succession,
The sky becomes a crowded mouth full of color, shouting its last words across the rooftops,
The air tastes like gunpowder and the kind of hope that hurts a little when you swallow it,
Every boom rattles the frozen street, shakes loose some stale regret from the past twelve months and throws it into the dark.
You and the hand you are holding stand in the middle of it, anchored on your treacherous patch of pavement,
Feet sliding a little, bodies leaning unconsciously inward like you are bracing together against a wave,
Their forehead brushes your temple when one explosion goes off louder than expected,
Neither of you pull away.
When the final burst fades and the echo rolls off into the distance,
There is an odd pause, a silence that limps in after all that noise,
You can hear someone clapping half heartedly, someone else whistling, a baby crying two blocks down,
Your ears ring in that hollow way that makes the world sound underwater,
And through that faint buzz you hear their voice close by, soft and almost surprised at itself.
They say your name in the tone people use when they are about to step off a ledge,
You turn, eyes still adjusting to the lack of strobe light sky,
Their free hand gestures vaguely upward, taking in the smoke and the sparks still drifting,
Then drops back down to tap your knuckles where your hands are joined.
“This was my favorite part,” they admit, a little awkward, a little brave.“Not the explosions. This. The sidewalk. Your frozen fingers trying to amputate mine.”
You snort, because of course you do,
Crack a joke about charging rent for your half of their circulation,
The laugh you share is quieter than the ones from earlier tonight,
But it feels truer, like something you might actually remember long after you forget which color firework you liked best.
You do something reckless then, but small.
You simply do not let go.
Not when you start walking again, both of you skating tiny corrections on the icy concrete,
Not when you cross under the streetlight where strangers can clearly see you and maybe draw the conclusions you are still scared to say,
Not when someone from the crowd waves and calls out good year and you wave back with your joined hands because uncoupling them now would feel like lying.
The fireworks are over, the sky back to regular starlight behind the haze,
Traffic picks up, life resumes its engine noise and distant sirens,
Somewhere, people are already arguing about resolutions and rent and who forgot to bring drinks,
You and this other hand move through it all, a small defiant orbit in the middle of winter’s hard face,
Warmth pressed palm to palm like a secret pact not yet spoken,
But very, very real,
On a frozen sidewalk that suddenly feels less hostile,
Under a sky that has finally stopped screaming and is quietly watching to see what you do next.