Snowmelt

“Primordial Soup” by Aleksandra

Whenever my mom calls, she asks how the weather is. I always tell her it’s nice and she says, That’s good to hear. The snow is melting and the ground is opening up—even though it’s fifty-degrees and February in Massachusetts. There’s a half-season of half-frozen, preserved garbage that gets uncovered: soggy crackers, cigarette butts, beer cans, soda cans, chicken bones, dead rodents, fast food wrappers. My mom asks how my dog is doing. I tell her she’s good and my mom says she was always a lovely dog. I don’t tell her my dog’s been shitting and throwing up, gaining weight and losing it, from eating all the melting garbage. I remember once when I was a kid and the snow started to melt in April. We found a sun hat poking out of the snow. The jays made sounds like jewels and rubber. We took turns putting on the wet sun hat, pretending to be our moms. Mud dripped down our pale New England faces. My mom asks me if my wife and I are going to have kids and I tell her maybe. I sent my sperm to be frozen in some facility in Florida before I transitioned. I never tell my mom we don’t want kids. The snow melts earlier and earlier each year and someday there’s not going to be any snow left to melt. I worry about kids growing up now and I wonder what they’re going to find when the ice caps melt. Maybe an empty forty and a wooly mammoth. My stomach cramps when I think about it too much. I wake up sweating most nights, but that’s just my body’s way of crying. Maybe that’s what the glaciers are doing too, the way Texas freezes and Paris burns. Maybe the earth is tired of us. On my walk this afternoon, I saw people ice fishing. Small pools of water formed on the surface. I wonder when the pond will swallow them whole, leaving screams, bubbles, then a quiet black hole, followed by scuba divers and a funeral. I’ve been seeing masks when I walk my dog. Limp, medical ones uncovered in the snowmelt. I wonder what happened to the body on the other side of the mask. If it’s frozen in ice somewhere, waiting to thaw so someone can find it. Like Ötzi, found lying face down in the Alps after 4,500 years. When we were kids, walking around with the sun hat and mud caked on our faces, we found a dead animal on the side of the road, its body and fur sticking out of the melting, muddy snow banks. Some poked it with a stick. I cried and never wanted to be a boy again. The earth’s surface is going to be blanketed with dead animals soon. My mom asks me how I’m doing and she doesn’t believe me when I tell her I’m good.

about the author

Hannah Gregory is a trans, queer writer with work in Passages North, X-R-A-Y, and Okay Donkey. She is a career services director at a community college and lives with her wife and dog in Western Massachusetts. Twitter: @hannah_birds

about the artist

Russian-born and Brooklyn-based, Aleksandra seeks to express her love for nature through acrylic. Aleksandra’s inspiration combines natural, cosmic and psychedelic patterns to create deeply colorful scenes. A rich background in Architectural Design and classical art serves as a foundation for her work.