Sarah Edmonds

I woke up to a snowfall. The kind that makes you want to stay inside for days, until it all melts away. I however, felt the need to go out and stand in it, to let it wash over me, to let it bury me. It tugged at my bones like I’d never be able to sit still until I was sitting in it. The majority of the day was, unfortunately, spent inside, my gaze drifted out the window with every spare moment I had. I was enchanted by the way it seemed to glitter like diamonds in the sunlight.

It wasn’t until hours later that I was able to step outside into the growing darkness that comes just after sunset; the crispness of the air made breathing easier than it had ever been before. I stepped into the middle of my front yard, the falling snow enticed me to stick my tongue out and taste it, as if I was a child again. This was a gleeful experience, like I had never tasted snow before, but I have tasted snow and it tasted like freedom.

I spun in slow circles; eyes closed, taking in the stillness of the air. Time always seemed to slow when it was like this. It was almost as if the blanket of snow was weighing down the very rotation of the Earth, creating a sensation that nothing short of a rising sun could break. The stillness was just as reassuring as the silence that arose in the aftermath of a snowstorm. Through the trance-like state I had settled into, I vaguely remembered being taught something about the spaces between ice crystals absorbing soundwaves, but the scientific technicalities didn’t matter very much. I was too caught up in the silence that would have been suffocating under any other circumstances, but in that moment, only felt like home.