1.

Friday night, after working a double shift at the diner, Audrey walked in the trailer door, tossed her keys on the table and sank into the sofa, not even stopping to turn on the lights.

After a few minutes, she reached over and lifted from the coffee table a cheap souvenir snow globe that a lover had given her many years before. Moonlight shined in through the open window, illuminating the tiny metropolis within. She shook it gently and watched the falling snow and twinkling lights inside, shimmering almost as if they were real.

2.

Other than a freak blizzard at Halloween and a few brisk days, the city’s autumn had lasted all the way into January, but that night a layer of fine snow drifted down, coating four hundred years of grime with a temporary whitewash.

Snow muted the city’s sounds and made it seem like anything was possible, like magic was real just for that one night.

In Chinatown, an ancient ex-ballerina pushed a shopping trolley full of bottles and cans down the street, its wheels drawing ledger lines in the show, her dancing feet dotting those lines with the notes of a symphony long forgotten.

On the city’s most famous bridge a suicide jumper reconsidered his decision after an owl flew down and regarded him with curiosity from the railing. In another borough, an estranged son called his mother to tell her that he loved her.

3.

Audrey set down the snow globe and drifted off to sleep, feeling at peace without knowing why or how.

Notes

  1. goldenmesh said: I love the ancient ex-ballerina in Chinatown.
  2. jackrusher posted this