Shimmer

3:27 a.m.

The snow still hasn't come this year.

When I opened the car door there was a distinct resistance, and when I pulled harder it creaked, and a thin crust of ice chips came leaping down in a little procession. Glittering.

I let out a long breath, and a streak of white drifted away.

So a sigh can be seen, after all.

It reminds me of the year before last, the first time I watched the snow fall in Vancouver, when the caption I wrote for my friends was "warm the wine, steep the tea, and greet the winter's peace." I don't really know what that line means. I think I'd seen it somewhere once, and it simply surfaced from nowhere just as I was taking those snow photos, and it felt fitting.

Last year there was almost no snow, and this year it seems there won't be much either. In these golden days, time seems to have lost its weight, grown as light as the ice chips on the car door. Time is continuous; the new year, too, will go on as always—the stroke of midnight is no dividing line in a life. And yet there must always be something to look forward to; across the long years, such anticipation settles like sediment in time, and grows only more haunting.

I shut the car door, and I can see that layer of ice once more.

The night air is cold enough to let it go on shimmering along the curve of the car's edge, all the way until the sun comes up.

Like a river. The Milky Way.

And then that line surfaces again, for no reason at all.

"The whole universe will glimmer for you."