Snow. Snow white. Glistening in the palm of my hand, crystalline, perfect. Tempting and taunting the inner demons of my heart and my needs. It’s no longer a want, I realize. It has become a need.

I continue to stare at the snow in my hand. It whispers to me, creepy-crawly tendrils of invisible smoke crawling into my ears and my soul, telling me I cannot survive without it. Telling me that with it, I will become stronger. Stronger and able to face this dark, corrupt world again. Able to raise my face to the blood-clotted sun again. I try to resist this smoke as it sinuously swirls into my brain, clouding my head and my thoughts. Shaking my head in a futile attempt to slice through the mist, I remember how I became this way.

Family, dead. Suicide, gang fights, sickness… I no longer remember. It’s all jumbled in my head, tumbling and spinning around and around like a demented carousel, up and down, and side to side… And I, the only heir to a small ramshackle hut and a few dollar bills, reduced to sitting in this broken down, rusted lawn chair, staring at the bane of my existence.

The bane of my existence, yet also the only reason I keep myself alive.

I’ve tried to resist the sins calling to me from this white snow. I’ve tried more times than I can count. But the aches, the pain, the depression, the problems I can’t ignore without its parasitic support, it is all too much for me to handle. I am weak, and I have nobody. I give in every time, driven more by my base needs than by my logic. A coward, I am. My brain does not function anymore. Only these pale, wasted limbs continue to move, continue to struggle.

I finally give in. The snow glistens at me. I think of the heaven that is to come. I think of the problems I can forget. I am Snow White, biting into the poisonous apple.

But this is my story. There will be no handsome prince to save me, nor seven little dwarves to care for me.

All that I have is this poisonous apple. But for me, this apple is my only salvation.