I walk with the girl back across the highway in the dark, snow blankets everything, including the future, the loss of hope, the acquisition of children, the tiny individual snowflakes not unlike irreplaceable genetic components of life

She clears the windows of snow so the boy can drive to class in the morning…

What she doesn’t know won’t kill her, although fragments of conversations with oddly placed strangers are still defining

After all these years

The night is still cold, but cloudless this time, the moon looks on

Through the denuded branches of the tree the mourning doves have claimed

Leaving something besides snow to wipe aside, best I can, in the night