Cora Beels

In the sunlight the snow sparkles all the brighter.

Dear winter snow,

You are soft and delicate, you flutter from the sky like a dance in the moonlight. Even in the darkest skies, you refract light like the glimmer in a dreamer’s eye. You might be cold, but you blanket the earth with the warmest embrace. 

Oh, winter snow, when padding through your blurry daze, I caught you on my eyelashes but couldn’t bring myself to blink you away. Late at night, I found myself alone with you. In a parking lot, my friends broke away to whisper in the darkness, and there we were. Winter snow, you grew with the night, sweeping me in your embrace.

I joined your dance in the moonlight, fluttering across the pavement in sync. Winter snow, one was supposed to be cold, you were warm. Your laugh was hearty, and your mood was friendly. Sparkling with the stars, it was hard to look away. Like a Hollywood movie, the night was black and white; you blended in with the stars in glowing flakes across the sky.

My mother always warned me never to take off my coat in the winter, as cold was a silent killer. Even on the warmest winter nights, rosy cheeks were warning signs, and sweaty hands were foreshadowing. The winter is cold, but winter snow was warm.

Winter is just a season, passing with the weather and time. People always assured one another that winter was but encouragement to get them to the summer. I don’t want summer heat, I want winter snow. But winter snow is cold and bitter; winter snow bites at your face and veils your gaze. Winter snow is cold; you have to keep your coat on. Nonetheless, a coat has never felt more suffocating. I want the winter snow to drape me in its soft crystals and dance once more in the night sky.

As much as I fought the seasons, nails broken from clawing at reality, trying to pry back an inevitable cloak’s hand, it sprang forward with tenacity. Winter nights slowed, and the winter snow that had piled in the permanent mountains began to melt into puddles, which unfeeling drains swallowed whole. Hands muddy, I tried to shovel you up, keeping you in a pocket you seeped through. Everyone knew winter snow was temporary, but I didn’t want to lose you. I had taken off my coat, and without it, the cold bit my arms and froze my face. Reddened cheeks and frosty eyes, I felt frostbite claw at my fingers. Winter snow was mean. Winter snow had a vicious cold that, once it crept into your soul, froze your veins. The cold was numbing, but I didn’t want you to melt away, even if you made my veins blue and every part of me cold. 

The sun had risen, and everything connected to the winter snow had disappeared. I tried to blame the sun for melting you, but I knew you wanted to leave. You were a season,  a temporary situation, a storm of bad weather that swept through the earth and didn’t linger anywhere long. Winter snow is just that, snow in the winter. It sparkles and dazes, and melts in the spring. Winter snow can’t be anything more than that.

As the spring led to summer and the summer to the fall, I knew which season was next. Entering the winter with a summer tan and coat wrapped tightly, and when snow nestled on my lashes, I blinked it away. The season had cycled, falling into the same pattern as years before, but winter snow was temporary, and the cold was not worth the beauty.