Forty-Minute Story: “Snow”

View from my house yesterday afternoon

She seems distracted. Looking at the snow.

“They can’t all be unique,” she says.

We’re in the family room, curled up together on the couch. On the television, Walt’s yelling at Jesse about something. She pays no attention. Fireplace off, central heat kicking. From under her blanket she’s looking at the snow.

“Snowflakes?” I say.

“Since the dawn of time, there must have been…” She cocks her head, doing the math. “Ninety-nine gazillion snowflakes. No way none of them gets a dupe. Sooner or later, we’re bound to get a repeat.”

“What happens then?”

She lights up, hands clutching at unseen foes. “Then it’s a sign!”

“A sign.”

“The end times! Snowmageddon! Hailpocalypse! Icenarok!” She punches her palm. “Bam, just like that. Snow runs out of ideas, it’s all over, baby. Hell hath no fury like a macroscopic ice crystal scorned.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!”

Her eyes go dreamy, and I know I’ve lost her. I bring her back with a kiss. We sit in silence for a time. More yelling on the TV. I feel like I’ve watched this scene somewhere before.

“Maybe,” I whisper, “they’re all fragments of the same giant primordial flake. When the meteor smashed the dinosaurs, it also smashed Flakezilla, and all the ones we get now are just the pieces. So in a way, maybe they’re all the same.”

She considers this. As she cogitates, she absently licks her lips, and I restrain the urge to kiss her again. I want to know what she’s going to say.

“Flakezilla?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s stupid.”

Well. I tried.

“I love you,” I offer instead.

She smiles, utterly unique.