When a Decision is Made to Stay in One Place.

The snow was light and sparse and reminded him of the pubic hair on his first real red-headed girlfriend.

It was the kind of snow that fell and melted the second it hit one’s skin.

The way it inhaled and exhaled itself toward the pavement was nothing short of a visual phenomenon. It breathed just enough to maintain a light barrier over the preexisting sharp ridges of what was once it’s brethren but now, it’s inevitable fate: Ice crunched under foot like the sound of bones breaking in a high school football game.

Minus the fans and all the noisemakers, he glided across the thick white patches with finesse and straight-back confidence. He’d remember this walk when he’d get home. He’d use it as an excuse to not go out again. It was beautiful and he knew it. But the beauty was not worth the risk to step outside his apartment. To walk the nearly six blocks, for water, to an always empty corner store.

Leaving wouldn’t be worth the work come Friday when he’d still be sick and have to spend another late January weekend with his friends completely sober on feeling alone.

The phone rings and he ignores it. He doesn’t try to do it; he’s just doing something more important…

Tending to his eyebrows.

Swabbing out his earlobes.

Flossing past the canines.

Dabbing his face with coarse hand towels.

Unlike snowflakes, his beauty would stay. Yet, snowflakes are not susceptible to eight a.m. headaches or vulnerable to the dentist's ultimate nemesis, teeth sick with fits of decay.

Flakes lack hands and wrists and five digit fists. They are truly unable to ensure long lasting survival. Come rain or shine, in the end, snow just dies.

Everytime.

In

and

out.

They breathe down to the ground. Dissipating like an airy “o” from a drawn out southern belle’s “hello.”

He’d make sure he was preserved. He was cold, yeah that was it.

Cool.
He was cool. It could be seen in his alizarin colored cheeks.
He loved the winter weather.
He loved to see that he could outlive the existence of his very own element.