Snow and Running

Snow, unlike anything else I’ve ever come across before, has a huge significance no matter what quantity or volume it is found in. The significance of snow cannot be rationalised or differentiated, for it has shaken me up into thinking, every time I come across it, like finding an unexpected treasure on the ground or feeling your nostrils flare up when someone words a phrase you have heard many times before differently, in such a way that you understand it. It snowed today.
I must admit, it snowed for about two minutes, I didn’t even have time to change my clothes into running gear and exit the house, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I went outside anyway and ran, which I hadn’t done for a couple of weeks, thanks to my persistent sense of obligation to do well in studying. Running saves me. Running relates to snow, to a certain feeling of tightness in my chest and a person, who, for the sake of the argument, we shall call Will. All these correlate together in a couple of seconds of understanding, in the same way as you never notice the moments where you are completely happy, for you are overcome with the fact that a strange many thing have come together to form that moment.
I was walking back from the bus, which, for once, came on time. The air was crispy and cold, and I could make out my breath in the setting shadows of the evening. I passed a window of one of the council houses and saw a boy, who I recognised as a stepbrother of a friend I once knew. I looked away, but when I looked back he was still stood at the window staring at me. Did he recognise me? I would like to think he did, I like it when strangers do. There was a song in my headphones and it was brilliant, because this wasn’t the hundredth time I heard it, I was still falling in love with it. Just as I started to cross the road to my house, I felt a prickle on my cheek. I looked around and saw flakes, though anorexic and weak, shy at first, making their trial visit slowly to the ground. They sort of tried to hide it, to make this trial as unnoticeable as possible. It makes me wonder if they do it every year, so they can practise their extravagant, grand entrance. The smell of them made me stop and realise that the muscle around my mouth were tight in a grin. I rushed home to change my clothes.
The air was still again as I left the house. It was as if it was telling me ‘Nothing happened, you saw nothing!’ But I knew better – I saw the snowflakes with my own eyes, I have witnessed this winter’s first snow. I started running, the cold gripping my nose until I couldn’t feel it anymore and the familiar sensation of sudden awareness of my own body spread. The rhythmic pounding on my feet against the ground was soothing, but my thoughts went straight back to the science I’ve been studying hard for the exams coming up. I saw my lungs expand and collapse, their elastic recoil pushing the carbon dioxide out of my mouth as a cloud of waste product. I could see before my eyes the respiration reaction in the cells of my heart, and the systole and diastole making it contract and relax. ‘Lub’ went the antrioventricular valves. ‘Dub’ answered the semilunar valves. The oxygen was circling all around my body and my muscles drinking it like liquid honey. So I pushed those thoughts away. They were replaced by images of me in a test, having a complete mind blank and I recognised the terrified feeling, once again, of knowing what you do not know. My chest tightened again. Then, as always, my thoughts went to Will, the day I wrote the poem, the snow. Months later, I lost Will. I can see us sitting on the bench, standing near the lake, walking along the path every time I run, it’s like those memories have dissociated into the air, but my presence there brings them to be visible again. I remember losing Will and losing my will to feel, every time I run. But as I’ve said, running saves me. Because when I’m running, I remember to breathe. I remember that I need the oxygen and the glucose for my body to work and it is thanking me, with gentle whispering of endorphins into my very being. With the hypnotic beating of my feet against the ground I remember that I am living and by this time, my chest is tight and I remember, I remember to breathe and I collapse my lungs harder, the waste product of my studying, the disappointment, the pain of losing someone that is, after all, an aftertaste now, it is all being released. Thank God it’s winter, because I can see it. In the white cloud of smoke that leaves my mouth every time I breathe out I can see what I let go of and it is real, I can see it in front of me, it has been condensed and filtered out . Thanks to running, the waste product that exits my lungs leaves room for fresh, crispy air. It creates room for new understanding and acceptance and feeling. It leaves room for maybe cold, but clear air that reduces the fog around my tired thoughts. It is the shock of a defibrillator and it is a soothing softness of stepping onto a soft sheepskin rug first thing in the morning. Running makes me feel infinite.

-N