ella thompson frost

[frost]

ella thompson

she grew up with wrapping paper scattered around a messy room and trees like ghosts outside her window frost tinting their branches white, foreshadowing the snowy days that follow early december.

she wore mittens in the cold months, though she hated them dearly, and tore them off with satisfaction when the neighborhood cats beckoned with fractured meows and soft fur.

her mother, a kind woman, with brown hair, would join her on the stone steps that led up to their little blue house (with cracked, peeling paint) and would sit with her until the air became too fierce and turned their faces red like the cherry pie that they always had on christmas eve, the kind that was bought at the store and put on a crystal plate, because it tasted better that way.

she was the type of girl who threw snowballs with a fury that seemed disproportionate

to her small stature; though her aim was uncertain; young arms and thin legs still holding on to the clumsy first years of life.

she was loved by her parents and her neighbors and the world in the way that the rain eased when she made the trek to school and the way that blackberry thorns never held on to her for longer than a moment.

she did not grow up with pearls in her ears or diamonds circling her wrist but she grew up knowing that the snow would fall again and that the stars would spin in the sky and that the seasons would pass in hues of pink and navy and porcelain white. and for her, that was more than enough.