Silent Snow

In mid-October, it arrives how it always does: Rapid. Enduring. The rain starts to muffle its frenetic drumbeat on the metal roof of our cabin. Precipitation will still fall, but now it will come without announcing itself. It will build layer upon layer- a muted pressure that strains the rafters to near breaking.

We will see neither road nor town again until April. But we are a people carved of this latitude, raised to spend months of near-night beneath Aurora glow as the snow around us iridesces in shifting hues of green and violet.

This year there are two of us, although for a decade there were three. Without him, the silence came early. Even the birdsong and buglings of autumn mass migrations could not find the breath to reverberate beyond the front door.

Once we huddled together for warmth. Now we endure in separate icy chambers. No sound passes between us now- we remainders. Whispers still seep through the chimney of the wood stove. They are the wrong words, borne of contextless should’ves and impulsive judgements from those who never lost a child.

We find the paper- slipped between pages of a book of fables- one February morning. The list of spelling words is written over and over in loopy, hesitating scrawl. It starts to slip to the floor. You grasp my shaking hand in yours.

Together, we listen to echoing cracks of thawing ice and watch for tiny green shoots to emerge among the endless expanse of white.