Ella Peirce

A picture of the snowy trees through my living room window; the sight no longer evokes the feeling it did in November.

“Check the pulse and come back swearing it’s the same, after three months in the grave.”

The snow-coated trees are no longer my muse. 

The skift of snow that lay atop them has become all too familiar; the once sickly-sweet sight has become just sickly. It’s not fair of me to condemn the trees, and it’s not their fault that I’m now nauseous at the sight of them. 

Now, I know how they all feel. I commiserate with all of those who tolerate my travails, all who put up with my pesterings, all who withstand my willful words—I truly am sorry. 

Mother Nature is certainly glaring down upon me with a frown. She didn’t build the textured bark just for me to wilt in the car. She didn’t craft concentric rings within the tree stumps just for them to go uncared about because they’re cut down. 

She did not place the everlasting, unabating burden of snowflakes upon herself just for me to glance outside and wish they would all melt. I envisage that creating each one-of-a-kind, distinct snowflake is no brief task.

As I drive to school, as I drive to practice, and as I drive home, I try to resuscitate the lamented feeling of yearning that once drove my desires through the grove of woods. It was a mere couple of months ago, but I don’t even faintly discern the girl who described the early November snow. I can previse not recognizing the girl who will espy the last snowfall either.

I look through the windshield, begging for just a taste of what it was. Just one snowflake, on the tip of my tongue, is all it would take. But I don’t open the window, and I don’t stick out my tongue. I look away.

Because as severely as I am haunted, the past is the past for a reason; I refuse to peruse its pages. I just haven’t found that reason yet.

November first was 78 days ago, and I’m endlessly better than I was, truly. 

I want to believe the words I’m typing so desperately.

I know the fever dream of melancholy is over; I know there’s nothing left to dwell over; I know I’m no longer in the parlous state of pining I once was; I know I’m at long last better.

But I sense betrayal in the evergreen trees. They enlivened my inert corpse from its autumnal grave, but now I fear they have maimed me.

I used to gape at their ethereal-like branches; now, I leer at them with loathing. I feel them impaling me as I mourn November’s death. I mourn not because I yearn for it back but because I’ve fathomed the distance, and it’s far.

The snow-coated trees are no longer my muse, and I haven’t found a new one.