Ice Skating

At Lake Mission Bell, after the winter scared it solid, kids carve short stories in broken, confused cursive into the ice with pens of sharpened steel. It’s a beautiful thing to watch geniuses compose their art. The other night, before the winter sun fell back into the earth and before the ice reclaimed its smooth canvas, I caught a glimpse of the beginnings of a child’s magnum opus. I’ll do my best to translate the figure eights and cursive Gs or Ys. I’m not a professional but it read something like this: “My cousin put an Ace of Spades in his bike wheel and it goes thwap-thwap-thwap-thwap (this goes on for a while) and I love the thwaps so much I put the Queen of Hearts in mine and now we thwap all over town and down to the mini-mart to buy Gatorade and Kit-Kat bars. There’s nothing else I’d rather do and there’s no better card than the Queen of Spades except for maybe the Ace of Spades.” childhood stories writ on icy canvases ~ reclaimed by Spring’s thaw