The First Person

What I wanted seemed little enough at the time. There was snow on the ground, grayish and sticking to the mud—the promise of plenty to come. Snow gathered already in the corners of sills. When she spoke what we had sensed for weeks without saying, her voice fell clear, unwavering, soft as the day. It hardly had to do with us anymore. The crazy tilt of the carport across the alley was all I could see for awhile, the weight on its wobbly roof like a terrible joke. But that was wrong—that was wrong. Before long the snows shook down on what we had done. What I wanted was to ignore it all, sit there in stillness, shepherding logs to the fire while the old ones went pink to white to gray.