"Snow on snow"

 “Snow on snow” 

  “Oh, isn’t it beautiful.”

  “I don’t know. Isn’t it the yew bush
and the magnolia tree and the house
across the street that is beautiful? Take
them away, the snow looks like this:”

 Last night it snowed. I hate snow.

     I hate this snow; I can’t wait for it to go away. May it never come back. Let climate change submerge Virginia Beach if it will keep snow out of the Valley forever.

“Oh, but it’s beautiful!” No, it isn’t. Look at the pictures. It may be beautiful in a snow globe, if you like white. Outside my house on this globe, it is cold, it is wet, it robs the street of all color. It covers all the imperfections - the cracks in the sidewalk, the patches in the pavement, the brown scrapes on the lawns’ knees - it covers everything that makes the street homely and lovely.

     And it seeps inside. It invades at the imperfections in the house, the places the windows and the doors, even the boards, don’t fit exactly. Cold, wet, paler than death.

     It seeps inside. It slips through my pores: It reaches into my gut; it grabs hold of my heart; it pulls out my soul, turns it over in its icy hands, snickers, and hands it back to me, shaking its ugly head. Having been in its hands, it feels in my own like a dead fish.

     I can’t, then, think what to do with it. I can’t put it back in me until it’s been warmed a little, and I can’t think how to warm it without the fish-smell taking over the house.

I hate snow. It makes no accommodations. It has no forgiveness. It thinks it is beautiful because it’s heard that so often. It thinks it’s beautiful, and that’s enough - we should accommodate to it - entirely!

     I hate snow. It is the ultimate narcissist. It is cold and wet; it takes the color out of everything it touches.

01.13.19