December 2023

It almost snows. It thinks about it. I put on my best (lights, baubles, little candy dishes), and it almost snows. 

Almost hurts twice. Like losing something you never had. 

I try to coax it down. I tell the girl and the grey whisker cypress about early winters in my twenties, when the apple man’s hands were so cold he could barely split wood. And I smelled like smoke. And I glowed from the inside out. And the snow settled six blankets thick on the roof. 

And the apple man, I’ve told you about him, yes? The apple man would shuffle down the ladder to pull up cider from the cellar. He’d sing sometimes. When it was just us, and the fire, and the blue blood sky. He’d sing. 

We left the trees outside in those days. 

But time, she’s changing. Variations in the pattern. She’s been at the same song for so long, the new notes are an old melody already. And it almost snows in December. 

It’s a big celebration when the flurries come. The girl leaves the tree she was decorating in the living room to run out in it. It melts faster on the ground than on her cheeks. She spends the grief she was saving for a spring melt early. She’ll open a line of credit for the time when it truly comes next year. 

I don’t ask it to stay because I know it can’t and I’m too lovely and tired today to be told no.

Almost, 

the apple house