February Snow

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It snowed about 6 inches. We went crazy.

I had never seen snow look like that. Glowing serenely with the orangey sheen of the lamplights. There were no cars on the road. There was no road. There was only a soft, clean powder, blanketing the fields, blanketing the benches and trees, crunching distinctly under each step of our boots as they sunk into the ground leaving our lonely tracks in the linen paths.

We slid down the small dunes on the side of the road on pieces of cardboard. It was the closest I had ever come to sledding. We skipped snowballs across the pond.
In that quiet, serene, sugared world of white, I wasn't alone.
Buried under those white sheets of snow, I was numbed into ecstasy.

*******

I loved that song. Grapevine Fires. It had been one of my favorites for so long.
I sat on one of those metal chairs on the side, singing out loud while you spun her in circles.
I wish I had danced more with you.



I sat there smiling and singing.
But I was really scoring lines in my own chest with a silver knife.

*******

The music was blaring. People were dancing and bobbing up and down with the heavy beats pumping violently out of the stereo by my ear.
K, I wish you were there. You would have danced with me. We could've danced our heavy hearts out of our bodies, danced until they didn't beat anymore or weigh our ribcages down. But you weren't there.

I sat in front of my computer, staring at the screen, trying to find some form of productivity in me to get my work done, but I was too distracted.
Funnily enough, it wasn't the loud music that was distracting me.


********

The building was lit brightly, partly from the white relections of the snow, partly from the white lights that glowed on the ceilings of the halls. I never thought this academic prison could look beautiful, but it did today. It looked like a palace.

It was quiet outside. All the snowball fights and snowmen-building had ended. The snow lay in tossed misshapen piles on the lawn as the new flurries falling from the gray sky covered them again.

I drew my name in the snow in giant block letters by walking through the lawn, step after step. I stepped all the weight off of mind, crushing it into a melted slush under my boots.

********

And the firemen worked in double shifts
With prayers for rain on their lips,
And they knew it was only a matter of time.

********

I didn't plan to break your heart
but I surely didn't plan to break mine either.