driving in my first snow

Falon Willow, United States

that blizzard came as they do
the sky, rearing back her regretful head
shaking out the bitter from her hair

& we catch them on our tongue
we call her softness, call her a kiss
until she backs up the highways

rusts all of our plans
until she scales the tail of reversal
buries your love behind a door

the storm gave me an extra forty minutes
with only my rattled lungs for company
& of course, each snowflake that

pulled itself at the last moment from
the dive into my headlights
& instead, streaked past my cheek

as i let each call suffocate in their own
blue light, the snowflakes whispered,
listen, we’re trying to tell you

each time i thought the word
‘end’ i opened the sunroof an inch
minutes later, i spit a mouthful of shards

i can’t unstick my foot from
the gas. i’m speeding up i think
but how should i know?

maybe it’s the brake. maybe i’m
stopped in the middle of the road
to be the frost scraped from my seat.

maybe the floor has rotted through
metal clung to the skin of my ankle
& i’m stuck in his endless driveway.

maybe i’m still there now
a glacier of a girl lodged somewhere
along that infinite road

only dreaming she ever escaped.

Falon Willow is a 19-year-old writer from New Hampshire. She's obsessed with girlhood and analyzing everything around her. She was the co-Teen Poet Laureate of New Hampshire from 2019-2020 and self-published her first poetry collection Sweet Dreams & Violent Ends in 2021.