Snow In Nagano
Holly Blackmore
When the snow fell fiercely, in the dark of mid-evening,
In those white nights that would hold space for intimacy,
condensation on the glass, two degrees
in the gaudy intersection below, they lay together;
You are the only thing that really matters to me.
In the quiet white-ness of those winter mornings,
her eyes opened and curled towards the sky;
there was a window for her up there.
But sharp peaks cut through this expanse and she froze like snow into
the weight of them, hands on his thigh.
When the snow fell fiercely, in the depth of a new moon
they fell together at last. The month before had been long.
Their feet squelched in the powder of the mountains.
Confident legs, poles and helmets and one missing glove
As she criss-crossed his path until day’s end.
Temptation was circling overhead like a bird of prey
in flight, and there was nowhere for her to run.
Seventh-floor studio with green tea on the counter,
the temperature falling steadily outside, nowhere
to be until purple became grey.
A lotus etched onto her sternum, she was the
centre of his world, a simple truth, too easy to reject.
Sipping on mugs of instant matcha. Stir thrice clockwise,
then back the other way. He lay bound to the tyranny
of this White Witch, half-giant in her size.
The world was freezing into an endless winter.
His reason was lost to the blizzard and hers was
solidified in its betrayal. The white nights fell darker;
the valley of her spine traced new shapes between the sheets.
Eyes glued to the ceiling, to the skies beyond.
The snow fell fiercely and she left him in it.
I want to remember everything about those days we spent at the foot of the mountains. These words will not be perfect or poetic, but they will be true.
How our arms touched while we lay on our backs, watching the snow hit the window-pane. We had never seen snow like that before. How warm and wet it was under the sheets, our reprieve from the cold. How quietly we sat on the hour-long bus to the slopes. I gave you the lioness lust you’d never had after we washed the day’s ice away. I’d never loved you more.
The sun set early in Nagano and we caught a train out into the suburbs, hardly any streetlights to see our footfalls but we walked and walked, soon lit up by the wicked white-ness of supermarket aisles. You stood in the toy section for what felt like an eternity, asking my opinion on which cards to get. The curry we had just eaten was heavy in my stomach. I craved the cotton sanctuary of our hotel bed.
How you collapsed over your skis on the hard run and I sped around the corner into you, laughing until there was nothing left. You said you couldn’t manage the pace of it, the lack of control. Your skis wobbled and shook but you stayed upright. Until the last hill, when you walked down to meet me. The mountains pressed inwards around us. It was the best day of my life.
You always knew what to say. Not through words, but through the brush of a foot under sheets or the squeeze of a knee at the dinner-table. When you looked at me, you never saw my skin, red and raw from the cold. You saw everything, reflected it back to me.