The snow started just after dusk. Someone was scattering armloads of silver glitter over the edges of clouds, and it floated down into the streetlight glow. She tightroped along the curb, dressed only in a paisley nightgown and red wool mittens. She danced to the middle of the street and spun, head back, tongue out, until she was a kaleidoscope of textures and colors, red hands dusted with diamonds. Snow fell through the night. She had gone back in for her blue coat and boots, and now she was sitting atop a drift that had sculpted itself against the trunk of an Ash next door. She was poised on the crest of the drift, frozen blue dolphin on a crushed-ice wave, leaning back to look up at the falling tinsel in the moonlight. She was half hidden in snow-speckled light and the tree’s moon shadows. I think I heard her singing. I watched her from my living room window, a cat in the crook of my arm, with all the lights off. She was like a dream of softly stirring color, a glorious, mysterious painting unfolding itself on the white canvas of snow’s static. I rested my head on the backof the sofa and watched, tried not to blink. The cat moved to a spot in the fold of my bent knees, circled, settled, and began purring. The wind picked up, orchestra for her lullaby. The snow stopped four days later. Our flat street had turned wild countryside of white hills and deep valleys. The whole street busied itself digging out from under the drifts and moving muscles stiff from too much sleep. I watched the neighbors’ houses for her and decided she had been a snow vision, brought on by tricks of winter light. I went to work and came home, a small hollowin my chest where I kept the ache for her. Weeks later, in the grey slush of melting, a spring squirrel spotted paisley and dug.
