Snow Day

Only the rush of water beginning to boil in the tea kettle and the faint trace of a distant train's whistle hang in the quiet of an empty house. The silence is as steady as the snow piling along rooflines and sidewalks. Nothing interrupts but the occasional footsteps of the broom bumping against the backdoor or the aching of old wood. It must be morning. Although I have been awake for many hours and should now be in class, I remain in the kitchen, complacent and covered in a blanket. I meant to do homework and the dishes. Instead, I try to fill the pages of a blank journal, only to lapse into rambling, quieted thoughts. Barely a week ago, I admired how cleverly, how valiantly they avoid their destinations. Forcing currents of air to carry them this way and that, how unsettled and smiling each of them seemed. Restless snowflakes skidded from the sky, and spiralled their resistance. But now, even the sky is sleepy. Today, the snow falls steady and uniform, without argument, to the ground.

An idea flashes into my head. Before I have time to click the pen into a useful position or settle the notebook in my lap- a matter of less than one second- the thought sparks and evaporates. The end of a finished match.

After lighting long red taper candles at the dinner table, the match's small red bulb turned crumbly black. When I was young, I always tried to leave matchstick words on the table cloth- the white one with the stitched edgings, borrowed from some relative after she died. Only, I never knew what to write. The match, a tiny pencil, would hang above the white expanse waiting for the flare of creativity to fire it into motion. Finally, I would light on something worthwhile and begin the straight-edged letters of my name. Always my name. Before I ever finished a single letter, my mother would snap her fingers or freeze my hand with a silent frown, if company was present. I'm not sure I ever left more than a charcoal-colored smudge and a broken match beside my empty plate.

Inland today. Everyday. It is almost a desert. Lips cracked and tired eyes, I am wordless. The ocean is a long way off; it is breathing in steady waves of snow, cresting at the edges of my driveway. I marvel at the pristine crest of waves, thrown glitteringly in arches against cement, and beg them to stay pure and frozen forever, until they melt, receding back into themselves.