Persephone’s Fruit

It never happened. It was the snow.

Yes -the snow’s fault. -I couldn’t see. Nothing. Night.

..-no

it started before dark. Yes. Before the sun could hide beneath night - yes

that’s when the snow started.

Pearls at first. Discriminate pearls that vanished before being captured.

And I was thinking...-or was already dreaming..

-No. I was thinking of Creon

thinking he’d be home by then, flicking on lights

-disrobing, and barely over the threshold. Italian. A peacock of habit.

He would ignore the mail on the little vestibule table.

He’d make straight for the kitchen

straight for the cabinet beside the fridge

-straight to the scotch. Would he take ice? -Not then. Later

-would he?-

after he noticed..

Glass in hand

he’d be in motion through the exit of the kitchen

through the rabbit’s door to the garden. Where we planted

-where I planted and he watched me, smoking.

He’d be just beyond the little door

in our garden, looking at the ancient stone wall cluttered with dormant winter roots

-he’d be there glass in hand

fourth fag of his return

and he’d call out. Another drag.

Another dragon’s plume.

My name called once again.

He’d have no answer this evening. -Then would he worry?

He’d finish the fag;

then add ice -wait in the kitchen to notice a message

as absence wasn’t my habit.

that was the snow’s fault

this morning - one morning

another morning

every morning

waking up wanting a break. A single snatch of time for myself

to just...-

a little something for myself. Always cold but never white; I wanted snow.

So-

yes.

An hour -no more.

A trip to the mountains. Somewhere ancient to shake the ghosts gathering to the months and my days.

An hour’s drive. No more. That’s what I’d said to me. Find snow

and sigh

finally

sigh quietly 

finally

to myself in the car. No music. No company.

No sound; 

movement

towards a rugged crown of glazed white spires

the horizon. But

dark came first an hour on-

-no- not dark..

driving towards the bend in the road that kept curling me away;

snow.

Pearls first. Yes. Pearls

dappling the signs

sweeping dust across the evening sky

thickening my view forward

turning the horizon to inches of visibility. So quiet. So reassuring. So comforting as it collected

blanketed the car screen

the car

the road

the shoulder

the world. It started there.

Yes..

A second’s thought caught in an unending second in upturned white. Yes! It was always the snow’s fault. My mind had been wandering because of it. Wandering me off the road. Bringing me..

Where was the autostrada now? -For some time no other headlights splintered through the storm. None - ahead or behind. White. Just a white which fell as a sheet without end. No one.

The silence grew tangible to my very skin. Yes. Too silent -for what reason? I began imagining the quiet suffocating everything -wrapping the world tighter and tighter

outside my silent metal bubble - sealing air from me -leaving me the noise of the beating of my heart -the pumping of my blood.

Sudden panic

numbing

singular

eternal

enveloped me! -Did I scream? -Some low guttural terror?

Did I? -Something. Because upon some sound

-the noise of tires crunching gravel

triggered my foot to crush down on the brake before I could manage a command.

Sitting still.

Out there, a living canopy of movement..