Snowfalling

First published in Southpaw 3

it’s cold. Snow blasts my face, whipping in the wind up my sleeves and down my neck even where the scarf is gets in my ears and nose and eyes though I squint. A flash of colour and light as a car passes too fast too damn fast that sickening yellow of headlights in snow coming towards you could this be it is this the one that’s going to hit black ice and slide slowly into you crushing your bones with that CRACK spilling the dark blood seeping from your legs the back of your head from your ears and when you cough the vampire dribble out the side? The thoughts will flash past you, everyone you met, saw, thought about, imagined, all these things you’d forgotten and never wanted to remember as you lie oozing into the snow.

The car passes and it’s all white. It’s a dirty white this storm, suppose it’s reflected light that makes snow bright and there’s so little light. Seems like night, like the sun was already being shown the other side of the world, heating up Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Tonga, Hawaii all those places you gazed at in The Times Illustrated Atlas Of The World and have still never seen in three dimensions, not really. Maybe if you ever make it home you’ll get on the net and actually start making some plans, stop humming and hawing and actually just buy a ticket somewhere you don’t have to walk three miles through a wall of snow and minus twenty-two, lie on a beach drinking something with an umbrella, eating sandwiches with sand and suntan lotion and watch your body slowly cook like a Sunday roast. Seems impossible here and now but there are places like that.

It’s hard to believe there’s even really a world out there. Sometimes the wind clears a space, blows so hard all the flakes jump like beaten dogs and there, suddenly, is a roof or a chimney or a dyke then it closes again and it’s just your cold body, tired mind and a lot of thick empty white.

Stay upright, next footstep drops a few inches, must be crossing a road, where? Maybe the one by the bakery. Must be passing the factory that makes the car parts that makes the cars go so fast they could slide off the road and make you not be. Not far to go assuming the storm doesn’t get worse, it seems to be getting darker but maybe it’s just your eyes, not as young as you used to be, too much going on, too much in life, jobs just getting worse and worse still not long to go then put the feet up in front of the fire and stay warm just stay warm anything to stay warm until