Snowfall

The evening seems to draw a breath, then stretches a silence like hide pulled tight across a large, expectant drum. Moonlight chromes four rusted garden chairs and sets each with a sense of someone gone, a presence imprinted on vacated spaces left years ago. Clouds move in soundless haste to heal the tiny patch of sky through which the moon has bled its light. Snow begins to fall and takes whatever light remains to illuminate the passage of each fragile flake until they reach the ground, melt, and are gone.