Postcard Fiction: First Snow

She imagines it warm and soft, like feathers or flower petals or the blanket on her parents’ bed. She runs outside to dig her hands into it and the white cold curls her toes with delight. She likes the way it melts from her fingers, leaving nothing but a pink pained kiss.

* A number of years ago I watched one of my ESL students, a man in his forties, see snow for the first time. He stood outside the school in a t-shirt and jeans and held his arms out from his sides in wonder. I took a picture for him. I will never forget how excited he was, or how his excitement became so mixed up with his homesickness that he stood in the snow and cried because his 8-year-old daughter was not there with him. I was thinking of him the other day, and then I wrote this.