A Haibun About Acid Snow

A Haibun About Acid Snow

Slightly glassy-eyed, envision these frames trapping trees dissolving into ash. Frigid pyres stream in the wind – where there is smoke there is fire but with this pale, ghostly echo there is only a mournful howling rising over snow-covered tracks. The sky is falling in increments, soft static dancing along blackly iron rails. They run perpendicular to us: we walk away without a second glance. Conversations were never given a chance to live and wander, we kept closed the entire time wrapped in warm layers, seeking comfort and finding it only when speaking through facades and recycled words. Open doors hurt. Darkness and faded red bricks – sometimes golden – these are familiar and distant. Every home passed houses another dreaming demon. But when the mouth swings open there is a world inside breathing and reaching out and the shadows crawl in insidiously with a biting wintry inhale. Shut that gaping, wooden wound and look at me. I never leave the ground. White snow stains the concrete brown sometimes and I wonder what twisted plants would take root in such bitter soil. Salt the earth in one practiced motion. Dead oceans crackle underfoot. And we shook, but at that point when the unrelenting wind deafens the world with its demanding susurrations, and blinds eyes wide as windows lying open and forgotten with frozen tears, you have to throw yourself into exposure and smell the chemical twang in the air. And for a little bit it’s so warm this could be the dust from every cigarette we smoked down to the filter tonight.

It’s so beautiful
When it’s not us under it
And when it is – ouch.