Silence with round edges
What hides beneath the snow
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The forecast said there’d be snow, and there very much was. It had started falling late in the night — too soon for me. I was trying to make my way back from a date when the blizzard came in. He was behind the wheel of his slime green, 1996 Honda Civic, a chunky vape pen in his hand. I was in the passenger seat, pretending to have been affected by his kiss at the bar out of shy politeness.
It was a 30 minute ride home, and the route was already covered in a layer of white. The way home was stitched together with entry and exit ramps, state routes and interstates, every mile a hurdle of anxiety as cool guy paid no heed to the slick conditions.
I didn’t fear death so much as I feared death with him. The tragedy of the fatal, wintry crash wouldn’t be the end of my young life, it would be that this was the last thing I did. The news would spread, and my friends would say, “She was with who? That guy?”
He had taken me to see a rockabilly ska band on a Wednesday night. At the end of the set, he kissed me aggressively, as though I should have been moved, a single strand of his blonde hair falling out of his pinned back mohawk so intentionally that it seemed like hair and makeup planned it.
Once I get myself into situations that don’t want but can’t say no to, I cope by seeing them through the lens of an imaginary camera. The absurdity, the unreality of this stupid indie movie. When would the protagonist get her shit together and find her way?
Somehow we arrive at my apartment. He pulls his car loosely to the curb and cranks on the emergency brake, wipers still flopping desperately to keep the fat flakes off the windshield. He looks over with a satisfied, crooked smile that is maybe supposed to be charming. I smile politely looking for my way out. He proposes that we go off and steal some trashcan lids to go sledding in the nearby cemetery, as if we’re so connected after our ska kiss that the movie should have a slow-mo montage of us flying through the winter night together to a Zero 7 song.
I tell him I have to work in the morning — just six hours from now, in fact. He leans in for a kiss, but I’m already opening the door.
I’m so relieved to be out of that car that I don’t mind the cold wind. Snow flakes stick to my hair and fall into the spaces between my boots and my ankles. His puttering car is the only sound in the empty night. I don’t look back at it, but when I walk into the entryway of my apartment building I don’t go upstairs. Instead, I watch through the foggy window as he drives away, and when I can no longer hear the engine, I step back outside.
It is the sound of softness, silence with round edges. Street lights reflect off of the snow, and the night is bright and orange. Within minutes, his tire tracks are covered up, the evidence of him erased by frozen precipitation. I stand at the door, still and quiet, watching the blizzard build its layer of white, a merciful blank canvas for the morning.
So good.