It wasn’t supposed to snow or smell like dog puke still in the corner of the sofa but it did both (it smelled and snowed), and I tightened my scarf and went out after dark but it was starting to turn, on the cusp, and there was no joy in it, the wetness only made me cold and I went back to my blanket and den, my sweater and fire, and thought I’m the goddamned professor now, sitting here kneading my forehead, the tall trees with their puffy boughs advancing, the bistro lights making the snow turn peach, the trees with their arms outstretched like ghosts ready to spring, and I thought what awful wisdom is that, it takes so much more than it gives, a girl only Lily’s age would have to lose her father, and no one knew quite what to say: and although we never met, I thought about him tonight with the snow, a small communion with the dead, that exquisite pose.

Categories: death, prose

Tags: death, loss, pacific northwest, parenting, postaday, prose, William Pearse writer