2.1.2011 | Two tales of a Snowstorm:

Tale:2

The snowstorm came the morning after Christmas. It raged all weekend long. It spiraled, it billowed, it howled, it flew horizontal, and it slapped you across the face. It raised like smoke from distant wild fires. It was a battalion of miniature blades with wings. It was air bullets with needle heads. It froze the tears before they fell on your cheeks. It made your feet forget who they belong to. It made them forget that they were even alive. It made your fingers blue and your lips numb. But strangely it made you more alive than alive. When the wind slowed it got gentle. It blanched the air to crisp cotton. It sashayed the bushes with white tulle. It powdered the grand oaks and cloaked the evergreens. It layered and layered, softly but single mindedly like a good love. It buried the side walks, it buried the mail boxes, it buried the bicycles tied to the lamp posts, and then the Hondas on this side of the street and the Mercedeses on the other side of the street. If you stood still long enough it buried you too. It muffled the sirens and it hushed the world. It put big smiles on the little faces that pressed against windows with tiny flashing green and red ornament lights.

By the next morning it piled up like white bears sleeping sideways one on top of the another. It covered anything and everything that was left under the sky uncovered. The world got wider with the un-dividing whiteness and unpopulated streets. It brought out the only people crazy about living the moment, the two of them, the only ones who ventured past the south side of the lake in the park that morning.

Spent on euphoria, she slept holding the red wool cap the young man she never met before that morning put on her head, covering her frost nipped ears. The single witness, a pair of black galoshes stood in a puddle of happiness next to her bed.