Wood rotten and glass fractured, shiny flecks of ice cold white smattered at the dilapidated windows. Upon contact, the web-like spokes of the fragile snowflakes melted, leaving only slush. And yet, the onslaught was white-upon-white. Not a soul could be seen through the glass. A perfect snowstorm.

Inside, the state of the wooden hut was no better than its windows. It was barely a shelter, but the brutality of the mountainous elements made any dweller thankful for what little shield it provided. Old cigarette packets, aged sweet wrappings and broken fragments of crockery that didn’t seem to fit together all adorned the boot-worn floorboards. And there, in the hovel, she stood.

She was still holding it. The letter opener. Who knew where the manilla DL envelope it had opened two months ago was now. But the letter…The Letter! She didn’t know where that was either, but it didn’t matter. She knew it off by heart. in her mind’s eye, she saw the angular forms of the writing so clearly,
“Forever yours, H.”
She traced the ‘H’ in her head; almost perfectly symmetrical horizontally as it was vertically. Methodical. Logical. No ‘x’ of a kiss. Sweet and apologetic words from a cold, cold heart. Colder than the snow beyond the walls. But where the snow was forever forming, drifting, shifting, and melting, she knew that the hand that formed that H – the hand that had folded the letter neatly into the envelope with no name – would move no more.

Somewhere in the endless snowdrift, a bright red rose had bloomed upon the breast of the one for whom her heart had once beat. The letter opener, a thorn in its heart, was now a bloodied token. The snowstorm was nature’s cemetery, burying all traces and years of history as it continued to flurry; white-upon-white.