Winter Wans

Drip, drip, drop. The snow is melting. It cascades in small portions off a blue roof in an almost-spring. A spring that wants to be alive with the warmth of a sun hidden by layers of low overcast. The sky a turmoil of static, like the mishmash of TV white-noise. A slosh-thump is heard as more of the melting monstrosity that has long claimed the hidden vestibules of the blue metal roof collapses under its own slothful weight, slipping away and falling to the ground below. Streets beyond the transparent membrane that shields me from the bitter half-warmth of an almost-spring leads my eyes on. I see lakes draped over the road. Massive pools. A spawning ground for the dirt and filth of an accumulated winter.

Tread softly, young Brave: Winter Chocolate Bars abound in those filthy depths.

All is held by the wanning grip of winter. Thick, masses of snow, wet and vengeful, glare. Some still white, other parts marred by the dirt of rocks that had been left on the road like unwanted trash the entire season. Fog lies low, as in wait, seething, as if it waits for a time to come down the slopes of the mountain and claim the land before it. A chopper can be heard, rotors shuddering through the air. The sound brings with it memories of a place hot and dry, but the image is of cold and wet. They collide like wrestlers, mashing at each other with fists. The cold one wins as the sound fades to nothing.

The sky begins to lighten as the sun breaks through. A moment where light washes through the window. I fly a moment, a second, an instant before it is taken by the foreboding skies as a school bell tolls the end of recess across a yard, a stave of trees and a field of snow. The hope of the light ends with it and I am back where I began, wondering what I have wondered, and thinking: where to next?