Blood in the snow (Marcella Boccia)
The first snowfall came like a hush,soft as a prayer left unsaid,covering the streets in a quiet so deepeven grief seemed to sleep beneath it.But the earth remembers.It drinks red where white once lay,where footprints vanishbut wounds remain.Somewhere, a mother calls a namethat will not answer.Somewhere, a hand too small to hold a gunis clenched around absence,fingers curled like petals in frost.They say the snow cleanses,that winter is a forgetting—but I have seen the color linger,seep into the marrow of the cold,turn ice into witness,silence into scream.Come spring, the rivers will rise,carrying away what cannot be buried.And yet, even then,somewhere beneath the blossoms,the earth will whisper its hungerfor the blood it was forced to swallow.
