Black Forest

A momentary glimpse of blue snow. I get distracted by the computer lock screen. I’ve never stared at a scenery quite so intently before. Houses blanketed by snow at night time. The front porches and the streets awash with a warm yellow light that somehow tempers with the subzero temperature. I don’t know where this place is supposed to be. Is it a real place at all? I have never seen snow. This doesn’t seem any more real than any other snow that I have seen in movies.

               It’s not really the snow I long for. I don’t particularly see the beauty of it either. It’s not possible to understand why people long for the snow without ever having witnessed snowfall. I’m not sure I’d like it even if I had. There isn’t anything beautiful about holding an ice-cube in your hand, is there? My bones start aching when it gets too cold. But I want to know if this place is real.

               Why would I want to be here? My pets don’t have thick fur. And I don’t wear heavy fur coats either. How would we save ourselves from the cold? The answer lies right there... in the yellow light. 

We’d all leave our cold, damp, blue snow enveloped houses and we would walk down the road. Just for a little bit, till we reached the street lamps. We’d all huddle under one and we’d be warm. I’m convinced that we’d be warmer than we are now even though it is not Christmas in this part of the world or in that one, wherever that part of the world is supposed to be. But we’d be warm and alone nevertheless.

               Maybe we’d all grow fur. The soft, bushy kind. They’d hide my cats’ eyes, they’d hide my face. And then we’d never have to return…

               But I don’t like travelling. 

I click on the screen impatiently till the ‘sign in’ button pops up. My skin-covered knuckles are awash with the cold blue light of the screen in a dark room.