Snowflakes (Triptych)

Snowflakes
There were snowflakes on the tip of her nose. They kept melting into cold wet drops and sliding off, so she tipped up her chin to catch more.

The whole time, Robbie was watching her. She could feel, and tried to ignore the silence he directed her way. He was worried about her, or scared, or angry, she could tell. But she didn’t care. She
didn’t want to care.

“Don’t you want to—?“
“No,” she cut him off.”
“To talk about it. I was going to ask if you wanted to talk about it.” She didn’t respond.
“Someone died,” he continued’ “You’re allowed to feel anything.” The silence he ended with stretched around her, frozen into snow.
“I know,” she said quietly. “I know. But I don’t want to.” She looked down and the snowflakes slid off her nose.

The Mortician
Everyone told the mortician she mustn’t feel anything. But the mortician didn’t think that was fair, nor did she think it was necessarily true.

The mortician looked down at her work. Laid quite ceremoniously on her table was an old woman with hair curled perfectly into her chin. She looked motherly, grandmotherly, maybe. She was the old woman who hadn’t wanted a memorial, or a funeral, or a viewing. She didn’t want to make a fuss.

She never liked to be a bother to her family. And they might not ever see her again.

The mortician fussed with the old woman’s hair. Perfect as it already was. Her finger brushed the woman’s cheek.

Robbie
Robbie wondered if he would cry. The inside of the auditorium was sweaty and drunk and filled with whiskey breath settling on cheap karaoke microphones.

The stale air was a sharp contrast with the outside where snow lined the gentle hill leading away from the door and snowmen waited to die. Robbie had
always cried when he wanted to least, when he was angry, when he felt rejected, when he imagined long-
time friends rolling their eyes over his back because he was too old to be crying like this. And he pressed his head in his hands to keep the tears from sliding down his cheeks because he was too old to be crying like this.

And he never cried when he wanted to, never cried when it was okay to. When everyone would understand, his chest was as still and cold as a rock.

The fermenting air of the auditorium climbing around him, Robbie decided that he could no longer breathe. He decided he wanted to see the snowmen one more time, before they finally died.
She was still in the snow with nothing more than a sweatshirt.

“I want to talk about it,” Robbie croaked when he found her again. “We won’t even get to see her again.”
“Just watch the snow,” she whispered. “Try to catch it on your nose.”