“snow angel” by Wyatt McColough

today i made a snow angel. i've never made a snow angel before, but i made one today. i don’t know why im telling you this. i just. i made a snow angel. i thought it was childish, maybe. i made a snow angel with my friend eva. she is my best friend, actually. she teaches me every day to be me. to not be thinking of these things as childish. to make snow angels. to lie down and exist and think and be my body and be my soul and be my mind. i am my mind. my mind has been thinking some scary things lately. it's been thinking that i am not worthy of this body, or these thoughts, or these experiences. someone else has it worse. she had it worse. she was actually raped. i am just a warped image of her, with no real evidence or backbone, just the tears that fall when i try to tell my dad that "i didn't say no, but you don't understand--" i am a warped image of my mother. she got herpes the first time she had sex - i should thank my lucky stars that my image was warped. i am clean. i am cleaner than you could ever be. i am too clean, scrubbed with a rock instead of a loofah. i am so clean you will not see my blood. it runs clear. the snow i made a snow angel on today was white. my blood did not fall, that would sully the whiteness. The pureness. the snow angel. i am the snow angel. or, maybe im just self-centered. maybe eva is the snow angel. i think she is at least some kind of angel, probably. she is true. she is real. she reminds me that i am real. i think that i am real because of her, maybe. she is into introspective thinking on consciousness. she would probably say that she is only real because i perceive her to be. i wonder if she thinks the snow angels we made were real, even though they've just disappeared by that point.

Wyatt McColough is a queer, non-binary writer from the Chicago suburbs. You can find them chronically online @dogmotiif on Instagram.