It is snowing out and I am cold,
And what I say you probably won’t hear,
For ever atom in me is frozen,
Right down to the heart.
I’m sitting and freezing to death.
I’m freezing as I sit in discomfort,
Observing the blur of white
That surrounds me.
My face, my blood, they are all frozen solid.
I am now seventeen years old and already in bad health,
Hoping to die sooner than later.
Retiring from a long struggle within, a fight which was lost and has been forgotten.
I harbor the good, but only allowed to speak at every hazard.
Nature, without guild, has rejected me.
I am one with the snow and like the snow I fade away.
I seem beautiful at first,
But my beauty melts, only to reveal this ugly, cold-hearted beast.
I am the beast who scares away people,
And I can say that people reject me as much as nature does.
And they say I am an ugly beast,
Only because I am.
I moan as I live on.
And I scream aloud beneath my frozen skin,
And nobody hears me.
The end of the day closes in on me,
It flights me like a ball of packed snow,
And I am hurled into one of the corners of the earth,
And it leaves me there to remain frozen.
I depart as the snow, I slowly fade away,
I shatter at the hot feeling of the sun,
And then I begin to melt.
You who hardly know me, I hope you can hear,
For I’ve ended my life in bad health as I slowly
Dissolve into a puddle,
And the puddle is red, and is filled with my blood.
Failing to be a winner,
And winning at being a failure,
I stop now hoping you have heard,
And waiting fro your response.
POET’S NOTE:
I wrote this when I was seventeen…which, at this point, was many years ago now. It was selected for my high school literary magazine, making it my first publication of any kind. Looking back, I can still recognize the voice that would eventually become my own.
© 1995 Tristan Robert Lange. All rights reserved.
First published in the Wallkill Valley Regional High School literary magazine, Labyrinth, 1995.
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