Snow

The pure snow covered the cold earth like a white duvet. Though it was dark the snow glimmered like diamonds and as sharp, cold diamonds it cut into my skin. The snow covered the left side of my face, it chilled my burning eyelid. As I was pressed hard against the ground it embraced me. My limbs were heavy, I did not move. I was a statue of shimmering ice and as an ice statue I silently let myself be broken apart.
I opened my right eye, the snowflakes were still falling down. No, they weren’t falling. They danced, danced through the air and I chased them. The despicable noises drifted further away and I joined the snow in its mindless symphony of silence. I became one of them and I smiled with them at the pitiful creature pushed to the ground. I watched it twitch, jerk, as though it was a puppet whose strings had been tangled up. I could not help but laugh as it was held down, too pitiful.
I let myself sink deeper. Drifting into a place where I need not think, need not exist, where all is frozen through. I wished for it, the peace of nothingness. A pure expanse, so white that it fills your whole mind. The snow kept falling.
Pain forced me back to the flesh, back to myself. I cursed my flesh, my self, dirty. The darkness surrounded me, even the moon had gone away. Yet the snow still fell, it fell on my face only to melt away in an instant on my burning skin. My fingers gripped the snow like claws, I tore at it in anger. Anger at my own disgusting weakness. The grip round my wrists tightened, I winced.

The clouds that covered the moon drifted apart just ever so slightly. A cat stealthily made its way over the snow, its eyes gleaming as it turned to look at me. Our eyes met for a short moment and I smiled, weakly, at it through the snow. Graceful, it should despise me, I would not let another being know my shame. As if to promise that my secret was safe it turned and jumped away into the darkness of the bushes.
Strange thoughts pass through you as you are being swallowed whole. The hand on my face smelt of lilac soap.

A warm tear rolled down my cheek, it slowly sank into the snow and I watched it as the night air froze it into clear crystal. How beautiful a single tear can be, as it catches a few rays of moonlight. Even a tear born from pain, humiliation and ugly shame.
Why did I cry? Because I could not be like the snow? Because I could not escape into the coldness, and let my soul merge with the snow, never to return?
I pressed my eyes shut and tried to disappear. The snow kept falling.
How long had I been lying here? It could have been an eternity, time had ceased to exist for me. Like all else it was floating away, far beyond my grasp. Like the warmth, the smiles and the noise of the world. My fingers had long since lost their ability to grab hold of them, so I was not surprised that time was as elusive. All is nothing.

When I got up, my legs stiff and bruised, my mind numb and my soul colder than ice.

The snow kept falling.