“Black Snow”

I remember the first time it happened.
My children hid in the house and stared—
fear shining brightly in their youthful eyes—from
behind the purple window curtains
while they took great gulps of hot chocolate,
and burned their throats in haste.

A year later, fear couldn’t restrain them
because they remembered last year’s miserable
joke of a Christmas. They tied
white pillowcases around their necks,
built a huge lumpy snowman, and
battled it gallantly to save the world.
They deflected evil blasts of power (their
mother volunteered to throw), but it
stained their capes and faces.

The third year, my daughter was “too old” to
play, but my son pulled me out by the hand while it
snowed. He spun, arms flung out and face to the sky,
pretending it was fine; his eyes stayed clamped shut.
I turned more slowly and studied my world for the
first time. It looked like the shattered lands
of my son’s video games, broken and
teaming with dark monsters, children
playing in the black snow. No one
cared any more. I hunched my shoulders and
hurried back inside, tempting my son with hot chocolate.

I feel like black snow this year as my wife and I
stare out the window, between purple curtains I
never liked. Our daughter sits in the middle of our black yard,
pretending the snow is white again.
I take too large a swallow of apple cider and
burn my throat, but it doesn’t matter because
pain always haunts me now. My
son died last week, in the first snowfall of the year.
He ran into the street shouting, because it was
white, and a great black van ran him over.
The snow turned black again after that.