Stain

Winter lingers with a vengeance, another blast to come. I remember waiting for the school bus in eye stabbing cold. I remember getting my face rubber in the snow by Byron because he could. I remember big piles of snow with holes in them, with a hollowed out chamber we called igloos. There was the toboggan run, maybe up Austin, a ride anyway. I remember a big piece of sheet metal, ten, fifteen of us on it, parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, flying down the cinder pile. I remember grabbing a back bumper skitching part way, to and from high school. I only like it now in the quiet evening, freshly falling, glittering white. It diffuses sound. It makes me believe in purity and truth, that everything can be made clean. For that small time I like it, before I have to shovel it, drive in it, before it is stained by our industrious obsession with the falseness of ease.