Double-Edged Snowflake | Poetry Breakdown

Hello everyone,

If you’re on the East coast like I am, I hope you’re staying warm! EDIT: I just realized I published this piece that was meant for tomorrow…so enjoy!

Double-Edged Snowflake

There’s just something about you that I can’t quite pinpoint.
Maybe it’s the fact that I can’t pin you down
or the fact that you pair your pictures
with irrelevant captions
as if your life never matched in the first place.

There’s something about the snow
and how it appears so harmless and gentle
but in mass quantities, it can shut down cities
without a single apology.

There’s something about you that gets on my nerves.
Maybe it’s the way you treat everything too lightly,
balancing the most important on your pinky
and the least important in the palm of your hand
and you cry when what you wanted breaks.

There’s something about how snow falls
and how it surrounds the air, the sound and each crevice
making its mark known,
making it obvious that there’s no escape
from the falsehood of gentleness.

There’s something about you that I can’t let go —
how you always manage to capture my gaze
even though I have seen you day in and day out
even though our souls have aligned like tectonic plates.
There’s just a double-edged sword within you
and regardless of what I feel,
I always get cut.

There’s something about that snowflake
and how it feels like a gentle plucking on the violin
and it tries to tell you about itself before
it meets its scheduled demise.

I wrote this poem in honor of winter storm Stella that has appeared practically out of nowhere and dumped two feet of snow onto the East coast. Right now, it’s my spring break and I can assure that I’m a little annoyed. Yet, nature always has its ways in amazing me with its beauty and power.

Every other stanza revolves around a description of a negative trait of someone and different aspects of a snowstorm. None of these negative traits are for one person, but people did pop into my head when I was writing them. I’m sorry, that sounded really malicious. At the same time, I wanted this piece to emphasize the beauty of human nature and like a snow storm, it can draw people in but harm you at the same time. Yes, it honestly depends on the person you meet, but I’m sure you met someone who manages to get on your nerve but you don’t really know why.

As the poem progressed, I tried to merge the two themes but still keep them distinct. In the second to last stanza, it’s about how entrancing someone can be and I meant this negatively. A tectonic plate don’t match up per say, but they cause earthquakes when they crash into each other. You and the other person can get hurt even though it can be a little entrancing by whatever means just like a blizzard can be. In the final stanza, it’s about a snow flake and unique they are but you only have so much time before it melts. That can represent your attitude about a certain someone or it can show how temporary something is.

Well, I hope you liked my poem!

Stay warm,

Alice