‘Cause in this city’s barren cold, I still remember the first fall of snow, and how it glistened as it fell.
There is nothing like the first fall of snow.
It’s like coming home.
It’s like every pain I’ve experienced in the past few months is gone.
Every cry, every sob, every night I questioned what it was all for. All of it is out of sight, covered by a thin layer of powdery snow. The snow will melt, but when it does, it won’t re-expose the pain. The snow and the hurt will melt into each other, lessening one another, and balancing each other out.
The snow is sewing my soul back together, stitch by stitch, flake by flake.
There’s an untouchable delicacy floating in the air. It’s found in the trees; their top layers are painted white with a thin-bristled paintbrush. It’s found in the icy-blue sky filled with gray, peach-tinted clouds. The drive to school this morning was indescribable. All I’m left with is the sensation of surreality.
Where did October go? One of my favorite months swept away by time’s unforgiving feel. I could spend forever in the eternal enthrallment of time, and in some ways, I already have. I try so hard to escape its spiral, I try so hard to avoid its never-ending abilities, I try so hard to ignore the fact that I know I’ve been taken by it as well.
I played “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version) (From The Vault)” in the car. I let the song remind me of every November since it came out. I let it rip me open and put me back together again. The song begins with the epitome of fall and autumnal motifs and transitions to winter and the change that comes with it.
So, once again, I let the music dictate my life. In the 10 minutes and 13 seconds of the song, I changed. I caressed Autumn as she breathed her last breath. Her closure is kept within my clandestine grasp.
I won’t let go. Despite all the hurt she caused, Autumn deserves to be remembered.
Yet, I’ll move on. She’ll stay in the back of my mind while evergreen trees and gingerbread swirl my foremost thoughts.
Lately, everything I’ve felt and everything I’ve done has been tinted with this nostalgic-glazed lens. Nothing is original and nothing is new; each experience is an altered version of one year ago. I had the same overwhelming, indescribable, unexplainable feeling last year.
But I won’t let that stop me. Every second I have lived in reminiscence, every month I have wondered where the previous went, and every year I have dreamed of what the next will bring. All of it leading up to now: watching the first fall of snow cover the evergreen trees.
