Nonfiction | March 01, 1996
Black Swans
Lauren Slater
This essay is not currently available online.
“There is something satisfying and scary about making an angel, lowering your bulky body into the drowning fluff, stray flakes landing on your face. I am seven or eight and the sky looms above me, grey and dead. I move my arms and legs–expanding, contracting, sculpting the snow before it can swallow me up. I feel the cold filter into my head, seep through the wool of my mittens. I swish wider, faster, then roll out of my mould to inspect its form. Am I dead or alive down there? Is this a picture of heaven or hell?”
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