There is a certain timelessness in watching the snow fall at night

A pure dance of white cotton akin to the sky winking, playing, dashing against the wakefulness of the night

Dipping away and drifting together against the solidness of the earth

They rest and glow beneath the soft light of the dorm room buildings, the cars, the streetlights

I find myself in a sweatshirt and sneakers hood down

Standing beneath the shadow of a silver tree

I have always been home for the first snowfall of the year

For the first time I am not

Snow looks different when you are seeing it somewhere else

Maybe it’s the way it is captured beneath the orange lights

Or how it twinkles like earthly stars in the moonlight

Or maybe it’s how everything around me grows still and silent

Not waiting, not stalling

But a moment frozen in ice, suspended in time

Like the touch of a memory it holds me there and keeps me safe

For a moment I am thinking of home and the same snow drifting past its windows

To collect where my feet will soon step.