She Waits for Spring

Beneath the snowdrift I lie. Despair pierces the veil of an eternal winter. One without remorse, without hope, without escape. It’s tendrils of ice have wrapped themselves around my throat and silenced my screams. Alone and forgotten, this is where I will lie. Until the first rays of the spring sun part the clouds of winter and shine upon my face, I shall know nothing besides the cold embrace of the snow. It has enwrapped me until I was swallowed entirely by it. On any other clear day, my face would be known, but in the depths of winter I have no hope of such idle things. So close to civilization yet so far from any hope of salvation. This is where I will lie.

Beyond the drift I can still here the sounds of those who frolic with life. They know what I shall never know again. Across the frozen pond I had walked before I found the mound of snow beneath which I now lie. So close that I could touch them, I hear the children play. Under the cold winter clouds, they find merry beside where I found torment. They skate in the rhythmic patterns of a freedom only known to youth atop the frozen edifice of the pond. Free to come and go as they are, I find more companionship in the fish locked beneath the pond’s frozen face than those who walk above its surface. It is only in the dwindling hours of the days that I have any hope of discovery. That one shall stumble across me and free me from my frozen tomb. But none every do. Their myopic vision only allows them to see their own lives, not those beyond. So still, I lie.

As the daylight shifts to night, I am frozen beneath the full face of the moon. The snow that loosened during the day freezes over and entombs me completely. Every day my freedom is nearly secured only for it to be whisked away in the silent night. Passed the pale pines, the wind whistles through the mountain pass and falls on the deaf ears of the town below. There the children retreat to their winter sanctuaries while I am left in the shivering cold. From my vantage atop the snowcapped mountain, I can hear the wailing sirens below. Desperately they search, but I know they shall not find me. In the night my only companionship is the bite of the cold and the darkness that has encompassed me. I hear their hollers and envision their torchlights, but I know still that they shall not find me. Their desire to free me is the greatest lie.

I know it will only be when the first flowers of spring break through the thawing ice and when the larks return to rest upon freshly dewed trees that they shall have any hope. Then my face shall look upon the warm embrace of the sun once more. Then I shall have the peace of the freedom that should always have been mine. But until then I shall remain beneath what I have made my own. Beneath my drift of snow that rests beside my frozen pond. Until spring comes to greet me, I shall have the children of the day to give me solace and the silence of the night to hold me close. This is my somber peace that I shall have for fleeting until I may have my rest eternal. Though my desire is no longer my own, still I send my silent pleas. Beneath the snowdrift I lie, as I wait for the freedom that I know will be mine in time.