When Snow Burns

She did not think sadness could make a body collapse. She knows it now

It began as it always does, not in the mind, but in the stomach. A slow turning, like something sinking. Then the tightness in her chest. The air thinning. The world tilting just slightly out of alignment.

She kept walking

The snow had started falling, soft at first, almost gentle. It gathered on her coat, on her hair, on her lashes. She did not brush it away. She felt heavy already, as if something inside her had frozen solid and was pulling her downward

Grief, for her, is not a thought. It is weather

It enters her bloodstream. It slows her pulse. It steals warmth from her fingers. Each breath burns cold in her lungs. Her vision narrows. The nausea rises again, as though sorrow itself were trying to escape her body

She sinks to her knees without meaning to

The snow receives her quietly

It is strange, how similar it feels, the cold outside and the cold within. The way sadness numbs the edges first. The way it makes the body distant, unfamiliar. She presses her hand into the snow and cannot tell where her skin ends and the frost begins. She is so tired of carrying it. Every word spoken too sharply. Every silence. Every small fracture that widened into something vast inside her. Others moved on. She did not. She stored it all, in her chest, in her throat, in the fragile architecture of her ribs. Now her breathing is shallow. Snow gathers along her shoulders, a pale shroud. The world grows quieter, softer, farther away. She feels herself slipping, not dramatically, not violently, but gently, like a light dimming

And then...Warmth. Not outside. Inside. In the dark behind her closing eyes, something begins to glow

She sees the way music once moved through her like sunlight through stained glass, coloring everything from within. She remembers laughter that shook her entire body, joy so sharp it almost hurt. The way a single act of kindness could ignite her, could make her chest expand until she thought it might break open

She remembers love. How it never brushed her lightly. How it flooded her, consumed her, made her radiant and terrified all at once. How being highly sensitive meant that even beauty was overwhelming, that happiness was not a spark but a fire. In the quiet of her fading consciousness, she understands: The same openness that let the cold in also let the light in. She was never weak. She was unguarded

Snow continues to fall. Her body lies still beneath it, pale and fragile, as if carved from the same winter that surrounds her. But inside, somewhere deeper than flesh, there is still that capacity, to feel catastrophically, to love excessively, to be undone by beauty

And perhaps that is what the world forgets. That there are people who do not have walls. That a careless word can cut deeper than intended. That indifference can freeze what was once burning

If you ever meet someone like her, someone who feels as if the snow reaches straight into their bones. Be gentle. Because what overwhelms her can also illuminate her. And what freezes her can just as easily make her burn