Cold Enough for Snow

by Jessica Au

I thought that some of it was true and some of it was not, but the real truth was how such things allowed someone to talk about you, or what you had done or why you did it, in a way that unravelled your character into distinct traits. It made you seem readable to them, or to yourself, which could feel like a revelation. But who’s to say how anyone would act on a given day, not to mention the secret places of the soul, where all manner of things could exist?

was strange at once to be so familiar and yet so separated. I wondered how I could feel so at home in a place that was not mine.

Though I understood the pressure of feeling like you had to have a view or opinion, especially one that you could articulate clearly, which usually only came with a certain education.

For a long time, I had believed in this language, and I had done my best to become fluent in it. But I said that sometimes, increasingly often in fact, I was beginning to feel like this kind of response too was false, a performance, and not the one I had been looking for. Sometimes, I looked at a painting, and felt completely nothing. Or if I had a feeling, it was only intuitive, a reaction, nothing that could be expressed in words. It was all right, I said, to simply say if that was so.

Walking back from the pool on those days, after having swum, with the gardens and trees in full burst, the sun on the footpath, I felt something – my body as my own, strong and tan, which could be anything I wanted it to be, so long as I worked hard enough. And I felt myself in an instant, the world opening up as if through a great funnel, going from my feet to the leaves to the sky above. In those moments I thought nothing, or if I thought at all it was unnameable. These moments never lasted; they were gone as quickly as they had come, so quickly I could never be sure that they had even happened. And then I had to be on my way.

I had the vague thought I had been taught somehow that the best thing was still to be desired, even if you did not desire, even if you did not much like the person who desired you. Where I had learnt this, I did not yet know.

remembered thinking, as we ate, how such happiness could come from such simple things.

I had one vague, exhausted thought that perhaps it was all right not to understand all things, but simply to see and hold them.