- Vol. 10
- Chapter 11
Snowfall
I'd been walking like a little kid, like I used to as a child. At the store, the row of aisles shone like a carnival fair—Valentine red, neon blue. I hadn't been thinking about my past, cause I didn't want one, and I wasn't thinking about my future, cause it seemed so vast I couldn't picture it. There was just the stepping, the putting of one foot in front of the other; and then there was her. She was always with me. She was like the snow that falls out of your window all night long—you didn't have to see her to know she was always at arm's reach. Landing, she would progressively fill the ground with warmth, radiating it all the way to your bed. In the morning, there would be those few seconds after waking up, where you wouldn't immediately remember where you were, and the world might have instinctively seemed like a threatening place. But then, you would see that sheer, crystal light infusing the room; then, you would suddenly remember. You would know that the snow had come, and that the ground would be soft now, and that there was no way that falling could ever, ever hurt you, at all. It would be like coming down the stairs on christmas morning and being greeted by the glowing tree, suddenly remembering that, on this day, the world couldn’t, in any way, fail you. Having her with me was like that. Of course, it wasn't always easy to keep her, so much so that most my life seemed to consist of those first moments of consciousness after sleep; only rarely did the pleasure of remembering come to me. Because, in the face of all my seemingly established wiseness, my memory of her was prone to fallacy, and my awareness of her once-so-solid existence was only dim—was, in fact, as feeble as a candle-flame. One gust of wind and I would return to unconsciousness. So that day, on my walk, I chose to step into a winter state of mind; a christmas state of mind, I decided that, no matter the weather and the on-dragging dullness of my routine, it would be a snowfall kind of day.
Snowfall
The kind of day that would remind me she was always swirling around me, falling next to me, covering my shoulders and back. All at once, with a leap in my stomach, I became aware of her presence—so delicate that you only had to reach out your hand to watch it disappear on your palm. The secret, I remembered, standing by the juice section, was to simply feel it. The more you try to grab at something, the more it slips; it melts. it is the light that you have to hold onto—like a firefly in your very ribcage, always one swirl away from making it out through the gaps—the light from snowfalls past, reaching you now, like a dead star’s.