Deep Freeze
written by: Cheryl Snell
It’s dropping snow, an avalanche of snow straight from the whitened sky, a suffocation of snow descending on a desperate woman, a person made of infinite wetness. She trudges along on the road with her grocery cart, swerving like a conga line while her mind collapses inward to the comfort of tea-kettles on blue gas burners. Below the wind-whipped cold, white banks form on either side of the road. Snow filling ditches. Snow rollers, snow drifts. Snow on the tarp stretched over her new but used trailer. She had been the woman of a man with lips cold as snow. A fine white powder glistens on her hair now, and will melt the way tears do if they don’t freeze first. When the woman left the man, he was building a snow-woman with dimensions like the Hottentot Venus to taunt her about her weight. He said, laughing as she destroyed the sculpture, that it was a tribute. Scowling now, as she pulls her shopping cart full of carbs through the door, she sneezes with the last cold she ever intends to catch. She expects he’ll show up sometime, offering her a No Parking sign as a mock house-warming gift. She’ll wave him away without a smile. “Your loss,” he’ll sniff.
- Climate Change - January 3, 2025
- Dissolution - August 26, 2024
- Deep Freeze - February 2, 2024
