Snowscape

Snow clumps in my hand, molding to the dip of my palm. I apply pressure. Individual flakes compound forming something new, something bigger. It molds easily. This material yearns to be fused, microscopic grains of ice clinging together, like a hug.

And yet when we try to stack it, try to build a wall, this material crumbles so easily as if suddenly remembering itself. It’s cold but I never noticed the hover of breath in the air. We work diligently. The day is quiet and serene. Sunlight ignites the white surface of the world around us.

I’m here with two of my former roommates, though we never together all at the same time. I’m here with Cycle. There are four of us. I’m here with my friends.

The last time we tried to go sledding Cycle puked three times.

“Are you ok?” I asked. “We can turn back.”

“I’m fine,” he’s always insisted.

By the time we reached the parking lot at the bottom of the hill, I could see him shaking. We went down once, then called it a day. He got puke all over the door of my car.

Ice slips through the crack between my sleeve and the cuff of my glove. It nips at me. Sharp reminders that beyond my thick padded layers this brutal season is real.

We all contribute to this surprising creation, each of us adding wads of snow, supplying inches.

At points I find myself watching them. Forgetting that I meant to keep an eye on Cycle, I’m simply in awe of our efforts combined, that we can work well together, that we all find this fun, a task with no real value beyond childish amusement.

Maybe that’s something the world needs more of. Maybe that’s something we all need more of.

Cycle was born with a quarter of a kidney. It was a birth defect. After years of dialysis, years waiting on a list, kept on standby, waiting for a call, unable to leave this city, he received a transplant. Now, three years following surgery, his new kidney is down to ¼ functionality. Life is full of little ironies.

Sometimes everything looks the same when viewed from a distance.

I close my eyes to freeze this moment in time, snow fort never fully finished, our time together never done, never over. I wish snow didn’t sometimes act like sand or ash. Something light and temporary, gone with the softest gust of wind. I wish I could squeeze my hands and this world would just keep in one shape. I wish I could stop us all from aging, from growing, moving away, from getting sick. Sometimes I feel melancholy in a moment even as it is happening, knowing that it will soon be nothing more than a memory, but one that I will treasure.

I see the glare of sunlight sparkle as it coats everything around me in sugar. The numbness and burning across my feet and legs is nonexistent, kidneys aren’t a problem, nobody needs to move, nobody needs a job. In this moment we are the snow forgetting itself, forging new out of the blank frozen slop, happy to be together, simple, smiling. For this brief moment, we are a part of a magical world separate from our daily lives. For this brief moment we are glowing.

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Kate E. Lore

Kate E. Lore is a creative writer of many modes, an artist, and a freelance creator. They’ve had a handful of short stories, comics, and nonfiction essays published in various literary magazines such as Black Warrior Review, Cleaver Magazine, Door is a Jar, Swamp Ape Review, Under the Gum Tree, Longridge Review, Bending Genres, and Oyster River Pages soon to include The Rumpus. Kate won an honorable mention with Switchgrass Review and first place in an undergrad college competition that granted attendance at the prestigious Antioch Writers Workshop. Kate was honored in 2015 to be a part of the Professor and Protégé reading alongside Lee Martin at The Ohio State University, a year later they were honored again with an opportunity to read some of their creative nonfiction work at Texas A&M University for their Bodies symposium of which they won first place in a creative nonfiction competition. Having lived in Ohio their entire life Kate earned a Bachelor's degree from The Ohio State University and an MFA in creative writing from Miami University. During their time in graduate school, they served as both the art and nonfiction editor for the literary magazine OxMag. Kate single-handedly judged the official creative writing contest for Sun-Yat Sen University in 2023 and with a partner judged the Golden Ox flash prose contest of Summer 2023. Openly queer, Kate is also neurodivergent having been diagnosed with autism, and ADHD. Born to a single widowed mother and raised in a low-income household Kate is the youngest of four, the second to graduate high school, first bachelor's degree, and the first MFA in the family.

Kate E. Lore wrote for the Dayton City Paper as a freelance columnist for two year period, and has done various other visual and informative writing on a project-by-project basis.

A jack-of-all-trades Kate splits their time between fiction and nonfiction, screenplays, flash prose, full-length novels, painting, and comics.