I've forgotten what I was looking for. The pile of plow-pushed snow goes over my head, and then some. The sky is white against the white hills; I've lost the horizon. I cannot go back out there. I cannot lift again that shovel, or rev the whirring ugly ravenous snowblower which I hate. The snow changes to ice, to sleet, to rain, to ice.

We leave the house before breakfast to plow and shovel and salt and we come in and eat at noon and then go back out. At three we salt again and wait for the ice to soften.

It is lucky we have nowhere to go, these days.

The sky is descending into night, now, at almost five. He's gone back out again to scrape the driveway. The world is pen and ink, all color gone. Some sepia seeps in the edges, maybe, where the redwood railings rise just above the lip of the snowbank. Where my hands have torn from ice and salt and gasoline.

It is a beautiful world, stripped down to its silhouettes and skeletons.

I cannot go back out there.