Snow Golem

It's not the sun rising that awakens me, that crystal glint of honeyed gold on thick snow. Not his excited shouts, or crunching footsteps. Nor the chill, no, never that.

He makes me, molds me. Shapes my legs that'll never walk, and my arms (crude and useless stumps). Gives me lifeless black eyes. A floppy hat that makes me look harmless, and a scarf, as if a creature like me needs to keep warm. He gives me fruit for a nose. It's a joke. I don't get it.

I stand, looking at the same scrubby patch of garden, the same little patchwork square of sky. Maybe I dream of going somewhere, but how far would I go before the magic melts away? They consign me to a short life and a miserable death, snowfall after snowfall.

It's cruelty, in the end. Cruelty, rage, and those warped, dead-end dreams. A potent cocktail to wake me, grow me, make my eyes light up. But it also eats me from the inside. So I let it out. Stamping. Freezing. Smashing.

Burning cold spikes out of my silly arms and makes them very un-silly. I stab, and watch their lives leak away in a puddle, just like mine does. That's good. That feels right. The warm spray of it leaves pink, melted pockmarks on my snowy body.

Rage spent, magic fading, I return to my post, to meet my own end. Bathed in the glow of sunrise, and my own, long sought after satisfaction.