Slush City

She is Slush City. My City in winter is a cold, slippery bitch.

She is moody. When she's in a foul mood, she freezes so cold nothing is allowed to live on her; when she merely feels like pissing us off, she turns into a bitter, cold, mushy place to walk on, slip on, fall on, and gets us soaking wet in sub-zero temperatures, inducing colds, flues and disease that we spread amongst ourselves on shared public transit seats, on supermarket produce, in line at the doctor's office.

She is an unfit mother caring for 3 million lost souls, a broken-hearted widow set on bitter revenge.

Every time I feel I've tamed her, she claws and bites back, making sure I feel her wrath, the greyness of her essence. She disinfects my wounds with dust and puss like she disaffects our youths with blood and cum. She makes sure it gets infected to remind us she exists.

But it'll pass if we survive it, it almost always does.

I tell myself that during the summer months she is sublime, unique, distinguished - that we just have to make it through this and head there, that the scurvy and hepatitis will subside and we can move to the sunny side of the street.

Until then she is slushy, and our steps take twice as long to get us half the distance. She is covered in a frosty quicksand that keeps you stuck to the ground; you couldn't leave if you wanted to, and by the time your struggles have set you free, it's Spring and you could spend the rest of your life just staring at her in all her beauty, feeding only from the sparkle of her bosom.

She is Slush City and she's got me by the balls.