[The boyfriend wrote this. I thought it was something that should be shared.]
Under the patchwork layers of insulation was a boy, and under the boy were green waterproof boots which held two layers of woolen socks.
Inside the socks were sweaty boy feet. Traditionally, on the end of feet there should be toes of some count and it was curious that the boy, when last he checked, when he planted his feet into his boots, felt sure that they were all there. The boy was sure they were all there now. They being his toes.
Curiouser to the boy was that he couldn’t feel them, his toes, in a way one could normally feel their appendages. There was a strange, phantom pressure when he squinched them up inside his boots to oblige his suspicions as boys of that age and caliber have wonderful imaginations of all things mysterious and missing toe(s)-related.
Perhaps a warty troll from the holler – one of the small ones – sneaked up on me and jumped into my boot, cut off all of my toes, and took them back to his mother to make stew or dark potions or some other weird troll shit, he thought.
Boys are weird.
That was around about the time his Dad told him it was too cold to snow.
Too cold to snow. If his mind could conjure up some toe-stealing, potion-making, stew-eating trolls from the holler, just think of what a boy’s imagination could do with too cold to snow.
*
I’ve since had it explained to me all science-like. It’s legit. But I like the way that boy with the green boots thought about it. Like he was one tough motherfucker to be out of doors when it was too cold to snow. Or, like no matter how uncomfortable it became, at least he wouldn’t have to deal with a snow covered hill when he carried armload after armload of split poplar up and over the useless barbed wire fence. Numb toes are one thing. Repeatedly busting one’s ass while doing a shitty – albeit important – job was not a favorable prospect.
His was a functional daydream of why.
*
Maybe the snow would come later, like a present. A gift for a good, hard days work, shaken from the inkwell night like confectioners sugar for the boy to watch from his window over a bowl of potato soup and homemade hippie crackers. That one was his favorite.
And sometimes it would snow.
And sometimes it wouldn’t and it would be a drag, but didn’t matter much to the boy in the end, the boy who is now a man who knows it’s okay because there will always be promise, and sometimes promise is enough. It’s enough to know that no matter what may pass, there’s a scent of something crisp and wonderful in the wind. And if you can just hold on, it’ll be peaceful and boring and joyous. It’ll be everything you never knew you needed – half-barrel buckets filled to their brims with promise - if you can just hold on ’till later, she’ll be there again.
And it’ll be something like snow.
About Charlie
