Снегурочка

I remember once--
I was about nine years old--
when it was snowing,
and beneath the snow lay ice,
permeating Earth.
Already I knew
the names of many demons,
but I did not know
what it meant to be frozen:
I'd never melted;
there was no comparison.
I had learned to breathe
beneath mountains of oceans,
learned to push through them--
they were so heavy on me.
And the snow fell down,
lighter, softer than water.
I took off my shoes,
left my coat on the hanger,
bared my arms and head,
walked out of my father's house.
I tested the snow,
felt with the palms of my feet.
I was astonished
because it felt like nothing:
the snow and my feet
were consubstantial, like God.
That's when I lay down
and let the snow wrap me up,
swallow my body
like a god or a mother
or a cannibal,
and I felt for the first time
what it is to be
inside another person,
consumed by something,
what it feels like to belong,
what it is to share.
The snow accepted it all,
leeched it out of me,
took my life and gave me peace,
and it didn't hurt.
I thought about my own death,
and I decided
that this is how it should be:
dignified, restful,
unified oblivion.
There began to be
prickling pain through the numbness;
I wanted to feel,
so I lay and felt it grow.
And after a while,
I felt empty, felt better.
I got to my feet.
I went back inside the house
with my books and paints,
pleased, for the cold still lingered
in my frozen hands,
made clumsy by lack of blood.
Neither my mother
nor father knew I returned
or left or was gone.
But I should not have felt these
true things, old things, and
I ask the consubstantial:

Where was my mother
while the blood left my body?
Where was my father
when my death brought me comfort?
Why did they not fight
the force that made me brittle
and hardened me against touch?