Boston

Born among that white haze that fills the air like smog
and causes people to bundle up in so many layers
they can barely move.
They march like penguins down the icy sidewalks of Boston,
slipping and sliding to wherever it is they need to go.

But I didn't stay long in Boston.
I left that snowy winter wonderland
for the more forgiving climate of Maryland,
a place where an inch of snow might as well be
a white wall stretched across every street.
A place where mobs of people
fight over toilet paper in department stores,
as if the world were ending.
A place where the soft white snow
might as well be golf-ball-sized hail,
it causes people to panic so.

My parents can drive on the snow
that blankets the roads
and covers black tar with velvety white,
while other drivers swerve and fishtail,
as if the snow had blown out their tires.

Snow can lord over you,
a silent white conqueror,
like in Maryland,
where people slide on the ice and are unable to stop,
controlled by a frozen master that takes them
wherever it wants them to go.

In Boston, snow is not such a menace.
In Boston, people realize how easy it is
to trample the snow beneath their feet.

I'm glad I was born in Boston.
I want to be the kind of person who triumphs over adversity,
whether it be the cold, white kind
or the cold, human kind.