To feel

      “What’s for breakfast?” I look into the kitchen. Grandma stands at the stove and her confident, nimble movements make the contents of all kinds of saucepans squeak and gurgle welcomingly. Grandma turns around and smiles at me. I got up about seven minutes ago: my head was buzzing, but the smell trailing upward into my room forced me to climb the wooden steps, upholstered in rough burgundy material.       “Are you hungry?” she asks and returns to cooking again, — I’ll finish soon, but you can take something from the refrigerator.       “No, I’m just asking,” I shrug and walk into the kitchen, slapping the brownish-red tiles with my bare feet and my pajama pants fluttering, dragging along the floor. A blue twilight hung outside the large window. The sky, snowdrifts, the road, rushing cars, the ringing air, the shop across the street, and even rare hurrying people — everything turned a delicate cornflower blue color, as if someone had spilled paint with a slight movement.       “Don’t go without socks, the floor is cold, I just turned on the heating,” grandmother asks carefully. I grunt and crawl onto the chair, pulling my knees up to my chin and resting my head on them. The kitchen is warm and cozy: a massive table covered with oilcloth, wooden cabinets with carved doors, chairs with prickly seats and a grandmother at the stove. I glance out the window again — it’s snowing. The thought that by lunchtime it will be even colder than now is lazily swirling around in my head. The snow will cover the sidewalk and will creak underfoot while people go about their business through the attacks of the biting, frosty wind. We are silent: grandma is working her magic over breakfast, and I am looking out the window and unimportant thoughts creep in like background noise. Fatigue lies like a burden on my shoulders, clouds the mind — I don’t want to think about anything significant; just lazy thinking, listening to the water boiling in the kettle.       It’s almost eight in the morning, but the sun has not yet risen. In general, in winter it gets light late and dark early. I think about my mother and sister: they probably already went to school. I wonder if it’s snowing only outside my window or at the other end of the village too? I imagine that I am lying on the ground and snowflakes are falling on me from the blue sky. A wet cold pricks my back, and white petals keep flying to fall on my hot body and melt, absorbed into my pajamas. I feel unbearably hot and stuffy, and I almost jump out of my chair, fly out into the hallway, and while my grandmother calls out to me in surprise, I already open the front door in the vestibule. The cold air immediately knocks out my breath and my lungs shrink discouraged from the short run and the frost that has crept inside. I run down the stairs and open the arms: the wind soberingly hits the cheeks, the airy snow that has just fallen on the cleaned asphalt freezes my bare feet to the point of numbness, and white flakes get tangled in the uncombed hair and melt on the face. I close my eyes, but even the inside of the eyelids is not black, but smoky blue, as if I had absorbed winter itself as a sponge, and it merged with the blood to spread throughout my body, cool the feverish heat and I obediently calm down, my ragged breathing slows down, I inhale over and over again, deeply, convulsively inhaling, as if it were the last time, although the clear air hurts my nose, throat, lungs.       I shudder and turn around. Grandmother stands on the threshold and her almost black and gray hair flutters, blown by the wind. For a second it seems to me that her eyes are actually blue too, and that she herself is blue, snow blue.              “Go home now! It’s cold! And you’re still sick!” she is alarmed, upset, maybe even angry. I glance at the sky, but the moment has already passed: I notice that I am trembling violently. The connection with the blue world was severed, although the color, snow and sky did not go away. Something just subtly changed, and I quickly return to my grandmother.       The warm tiles burn my feet, but I almost immediately pull on my socks — my grandmother insisted. Nothing has changed in the kitchen — I huddle on the chairs standing in a row between the table and the wall, curl up into a ball and wrap myself in a blanket. I’m still shaking, but I’m no longer cold — my grandmother, putting porridge on a plate, warms me better than the radiators half a meter away from me. My eyelids are half-lowered, and I’m all ears: the stove has gone silent, the cabinet, from where my grandmother gets the plates, is creaking, the cutlery drawer is rattling, spoons are clinking, the plate is gently knocking on the table, and suddenly, among all this noise, I catch a smell, the smell of home, warmth, early childhood. I widen my eyes: in front of me is a plate of oatmeal and a cup of hot chocolate. Steam is pouring out of them and I impulsively put my still-numb hands on the hot dishes. My palms burn and cramp, but I exhale and wait for my grandmother to sit opposite me so that I can have breakfast together. She looks at me with familiar tenderness, and I smile back, although it probably doesn’t turn out very well. I sit cross-legged, wrapping my legs in a blanket, take a spoon in my red, stiff fingers and ask something from the long list of things I want to discuss. It’s interesting to talk to grandma, and that’s why I come to the kitchen. We are talking, talking for a long time. The porridge has already been eaten, the cocoa has been drunk, and we continue, share our thoughts, argue, ask. I’m sitting there, narrowing my eyes, contemplating my next question when Grandma comes out of the kitchen with a good-natured, “Wait a second.” Silence reigns in the kitchen. I throw my head back and lean against the wall. The window is no longer in sight — but now I close my eyes and again stand under the endless blue sky, and the snow keeps falling and falling down, absorbed into me and I can breathe again.