Impossible to write in this rain, when the whole world sounds as if it’s draining away. You are afraid to open your shades because you know what’s out there is wet and hopeless. Even the trees have had enough rain.

::

The weekend was better: snow.

Something about snow makes you want to run through it, and so you do.

The night stays light, brightest down by the snow, as if the there were uplights hidden inconspicuously near your feet and around the shrubs. This light, of course, makes you feel like your life will never end.

It’s like being on a movie set where there is no time, only a crude approximation of night where everything is more clearly rendered than it should be. Being in this world makes you feel more clearly rendered, too, as if suddenly you knew what to do with yourself. Don’t the weed trees look lovely in this light and covered in snow? You imagine that you must look lovely too but won’t allow yourself such flattery.

You have never noticed before that near a street lamp the snow seems to fall in a conical shape toward the center of the beam. That’s another trick of light for you.

You will get caught up in watching both the snowfall and the shadow of the snowfall. You will feel dizzy if you watch long enough. You will not understand if what you are looking at is snowflake or shadow. This will make you open your mouth to laugh, and snowflakes will land just inside your lips. Their shadows will fall on your face, but you will never know precisely where.

But precision will not matter in this moment. Something about snow makes words stick together. There is no writing when it snows either. It is a time to be part of the world, not to stand back from it as an observer so you can describe it later.

::

Impossible in this rain, in these dark days of winter, to do anything but drag your heavy body from room to room and hope to occupy yourself. You turn music on to drown out the sound of the water sloshing through the gutters. But cars keep driving past, kicking up water as they go and reminding you the water is out there, dirtying in the streets.

Today, the lowest areas of your yard fill with water. The soil can take no more and purges what it cannot hold.

::

Yesterday, you watched snow change to water and drip from every branch.