It wasn’t quite what I thought it would be.

I have always imagined it when my tattoos blister and fade. Trying to look up and being stared down by the sun. I daydreamed of grey clouds frosting ultra violet rays still in the atmosphere and restoring me back to colours.

I saw it floating softly down onto my skin, each perfectly formed flake wrapping around the open sores. Healing in it’s soothing transformation to a different state of matter. Turning the land from nuclear waste dust into someone else’s childhood Christmas.

The first time I held it, it fell apart and crumbled in my hands. I thought it would be perfect. That it would be soft and delicate. Instead it was solid and brittle, the handful I had gathered fell through my fingers and shattered against my shoes.

Nobody warned me that it wouldn’t be what be what I’d hoped, what I’d come to expect from fairy tales and dreams and marketing. Nobody tells you about the cold shoulder leaning into your back, turning veins to frozen fuel lines.

When I felt it, my hands shook and blood refused to do what I told it to. The ground was frozen solid and no one can teach you how to keep your footing or get rid of that feeling of uneasiness.

It was the coldest I’d ever been. After that night, all I could think about was waiting for the sun to rise, thaw me out again, and kill me. Melting me in the midday oven. I never thought of snow again.