From the heavens it came, not the rush of rain or the arrogant throat of thunder, but a quiet thing drifting through the sky. It was the first true snowfall of the year.
It looked holy beneath the streetlights, each flake catching gold as it fell, as if the night had dressed itself in beauty solely to taunt me, to make a cathedral out of the world while I carried a ruin in my ribs. The calm outside only made the storm inside me louder.
I watched the snow meet the ground in its graceful, pale dance, and the past returned the way a blade returns to the same wound. You came back to me, not in any way that fills the empty crevice in my chest, but in the way that hollows it deeper, as if your absence still knows how to carve.
I think of the swing in Alexandria, the late nights, the hush between our words, the way you looked at me when I held your hand and promised you everything would be okay. That memory hits and, at the same time, a single snowflake strikes my cheek and jolts me back to the present. The present has a cold touch.
For a while the snow stays tranquil and lets me suffer in peace. As I walk, the crunch begins beneath my feet, a brittle music like the world keeping count of my steps. The field ahead whitens slowly, becoming a blank page, and I think of how much you would have loved this, how your excitement would have made the air feel warmer than it is. And I know I'll never witness that again.
So I keep walking as if it's penance. With every step another memory rises, another longing for a different ending, and each one wraps its cold, dead arms around me with a comfort that is counterfeit, a kindness with teeth. My hands burn with cold because yours are not there to save them.
The snow continues its descent and settles onto me, patient as a burial, layer after layer, soft as mercy and heavy as truth. And I realize this is where I've been ever since that day, since the moment my world collapsed and the air learned your name would no longer be spoken back.
Oh, how I wish I could show you what I see, just to hear that laugh, just to watch that smile break the dark, to feel your warmth graze my skin one last time. But when I look around, only the cold replies.
And in that reply I understand something I didn't want to know. The snow does not fall to cover the earth. It falls to erase the tracks that ever led to you.
