Final Fighting Place

It was that time.

When the icicles leak and contaminate the ground and the snow—once white—mixed with mud looks rotten. A disease festering, spreading on the grass.

The walk was never too bad. My house was only 5 minutes by bus away, but I cherished the 20 I took home. Under the bridge, through the small batch of trees—of which there weren’t enough of them to call it a forest—spiders made their webs on their barren branches, hoping to catch their next meal. I avoided the trees fearing the bony arms of the branches might trap me too.

My shitty headphones continued to play my music, one ear louder than the other that made me feel as if I was walking off balance. Maybe I was.

I walked on the trunk of a fallen log. I didn’t fall. But when I jumped off and landed weirdly on my ankle, that’s when I saw it: a little ladybug in the snow. Its red wings frozen mid-flight. I thought how it might’ve been scared. How it was ready to leave this stitched up town—where so many had seam rippers—but was too late. The red had faded into its black spots; it was gone when the snow was once white and cold.

Now its corpse remains in the rot, thawing as the snow and mud marry to birth a mildew around it.

But then I saw red twitching, hope blossomed before it wilted. If not the snow then the web of spiders. So I made a muddy footprint on its place.