December 4th, flurries outside your window, coating the ground. It’s the first snowfall of the year, but this snow is different than last year’s. The small sparkles of snow that used to melt at the touch of your palm and the tip of your nose are different. You feel the pull of that snow drawing you in, you hate the snow. It leaves you alone with your thoughts. It locks you in your house with your greatest enemy, that little voice in your head that torments your daily thoughts. But this snow is different, this snow is calling, and for the first time, you are willing to pick up the phone. Without grabbing a coat you run outside. The once light snowfall that was running through the sky laid its blanket along the floor below you and now you are consumed by wind and the unique flakes. Spinning round and round, trying to appreciate the delicacy and pure innocence before you. You wish life was this innocent, you wish you could experience the good in life, you wish you could be white, loved, and appreciated. White is different. White is not a color; it’s a shade. White brightens everyone’s world, white is angels and clarity. You want to be white. The small white sparkles of snow that used to melt at the touch of your palm and the tip of your nose are different, they want to make you different.
There is one sparkle that catches your eye. You race towards her, leaving the view of your home behind, leaving the old you behind, or so you hope. She isn’t far, but you have to be fast enough, you have to hear what she wants to tell you, you have to grab the sparkle that glows above the rest. You run, the snow piles becoming deeper and deeper, your breath stinging stronger as you gasp for warmth in the cold environment you now cannot escape. Footprint after footprint, you’re gonna make it, even if your ankles turn the shade of blue that you admire in your best friend’s eyes, eyes that you are slowly beginning to forget. The snowflake takes the form. It becomes the beautiful art that you thought you created in second grade. You reach your trembling naked arm out, leap off of your numb feet, and grab for the first thing that has caught your attention in so long. Just as your fingertips skim the corner of the flake, she is gone. You have to understand she’s gone, but why? Why did you leave me? Why? I tried so hard to save you? It should have been me? It was supposed to have been me? I let you die? A new snowflake falls from the sky. You raise your palm, one that is now filled with salty tears, and let it fall upon you. With the touch, you hear her voice, the first time in years. You didn’t lose me. You couldn’t have saved me when I didn’t want to be saved. You are white, you are my white.
Winner: J.J. Caryme
HOWLER LIT 