Fifty Words for Snow

It had been snowing again when I fell asleep, then some hours before dawn I was awoken by a bright light. Maybe a car had pulled into the driveway and one of its headlights was shining in through a window. I opened my eyes and saw, instead, the swollen moon casting its light over a field of snow-silvered grass.

I got up, slid open the patio door an inch. Cold air. Months later, life would again push out from the earth and unleash its cacophony, but at that moment, I listened to the night’s frigid silence and counted to fifty.

Inspired by If Only. Photograph by Fred Ni.