Disillusionment

I was catching snowflakes on my tongue today. I stood outside in the snow and watched each flake mosey down towards the ground, contentedly spinning in their own private orbits. And as I watched, I imagined I was one of them, dancing between their every spiraling glide.

I spun happily among them, giddy in the thought that I would float to the Earth and then meld with my kin into one perfect landscape - and then we would all melt together and disappear into the Earth as we were made to do. We would fall and join as one soft exhale of breath, exist as one and end together. Our lives a separate and unique as our construction but eventually becoming a whole.

And then I looked around with a smile at my brothers, admiring their forms, their many shapes. Then I saw one that was beautiful. It had so many gleaming facets, and we were dwarfed by it. It's icy tendrils flitted about the wind like a glider and soared to the ground like a butterfly wing, and there it remained. Alone.

With dismay, I looked at myself, and saw that I was coming apart, my delicate pieces starting to melt into the very air. The weather was not cold enough to sustain us as we fell, and none but the biggest would make it to the Earth! I would not be able to fall into the embrace of the others in the end for my end would come too soon, and I would be alone, drifting in this space until I was nothing.

I wailed into the night until I had no more voice, and then i cried until I had no more eyes, and then i was just... Not.

And I returned to myself, blinking. I dropped my eyes from the sky and felt the twinges of the reality of that thought slam me in the back of the head. I let the little contented flakes fall onto my nose and then vanish. I looked down at my hands and felt their cold intensity burning at my fingertips....

Will I drift listlessly in this mass? I am not the bright, magnificent snowflake that made it to the ground. I am not riddled with gleaming facets and mirrored micro-icicles. I am not the snowflake you will notice the most as you stare up into the sky.

Most likely, I am the one that falls onto the shoulder of your jacket as you walk away, then vanish into not even a speck of water the minute you run inside for warmth. I am but a little white speck in the sky, steadily falling.

I hope at least... I blend into the landscape of so many others, whiting out the trees and fields. I hope at least I do not melt alone.

Oru