STORIES: Reality?

She stood outside in the glossy wonderland of the early morning dark of a New England winter. She looked around her, wondering at the myth of fluffy white snow that was turning rock hard by the icy rain, glowing in places where its growing shell reflected back the occasional porchlight. Within a minute her hair was wet, then frozen and capable of being snapped off just as the twigs of the bushes that lay out in front of her, and she wondered then about the reality of it all, and where her place was in it. Nature leveled the layers of life to make it one. If she let herself feel it, she would know that she was melting and freezing into the earth like an icicle that stretches from a fragile hold aloft in hopes of grounding itself, but never reaches it unless it grows so heavy from its self-importance that it breaks its grasp, falls, and lies shattered on the earth it strove to touch. A minute longer and she might have made it, might have understood; but the cold drove her mind back to the moment, and into the warmth of her home.