I had a long trip ahead of me.
It was night, and the moon was high and bright in the sky,
shining my way ahead.
I was on a highway in the middle of nowhere,
I suppose I was headed somewhere,
but at that particular moment I didn’t care.
I was following the lines,
staying within the lines,
rolling along.
The night skies began to darken,
as heavy ominous clouds poured in from my left.
They blocked the light from the moon,
and the stars,
and descended upon the earth,
smothering everything with their threatening shapes.
Then fell a snowflake,
a single snowflake,
and landed gently on my windshield.
Peacefully. Quletly.
And then it melted away.
Then a second snowflake fell, and a third, and another,
and another and another two three five until I lost count.
At first gently falling,
but soon they started falling at a faster rate,
and I had to turn on my windshield wipers.
Then the winds started blowing.
At first there was a gust,
then a second one,
but soon enough the winds started
to howl and scream and
scatter everything in its path,
snowflakes and twigs and ice pellets,
throwing everything up in the air
tossing it around,
all the while screaming at the top of its lungs.
And soon I noticed that the lines I was following,
the lines I was staying within,
were no longer there.
Gone.
hidden under a blanket of those once-innocent snowflakes,
which had joined together to cover everything under it’s blanket.
I turned my windshield wipers on high.
Swish swish swish swish swish
back and forth and back and forth,
furiously fast but not keeping up.
I was blinded.
Blinded in a dark shade of white.
The wind screaming in my ear
(SCREAMING!!!)
Ice pellets were attacking my car,
like hundreds of bullets, non-stop,
endlessly,
no lines to follow
(was I even still on a road)
(where am I? and where am I
headed?)
And then I lost control
(literally and figuratively)
I gripped the steering wheel
tighter than I could ever remember gripping anything before
tighter and tighter until my knuckles were as white as
the blanket of snow that covered everything
and blinded me.
I was blinded.
I couldn’t see.
I couldn’t hear.
The wind was screaming.
(And was I screaming as well?)
The snow was blowing in all directions.
I was sliding in all directions.
The clouds were getting lower.
The snow was getting higher.
The sky was getting darker.
The snow was getting brighter.
Was I losing my mind?
I was already losing control.
And then…
…everything came to a stop.
My car.
The snow.
The wind.
I turned off my windshield wipers.
I turned off my car.
There I stood. In complete
silence.
Eerie silence.
It seemed as if the whole world had come to a stop.
There were no sounds at all.
The blanket of snow covered everything,
and muted everything,
in a strange and odd sense of peace.
The clouds rolled away.
The moon came back out,
it’s light reflecting off of the newly fallen blanket.
And I stood there. In complete
silence.
Peaceful silence.
And then fell a snowflake,
a single snowflake,
and landed gently on my shoulder.
Peacefully. Quletly.
And then it melted away.
Peacefully.
