Photo by Greta Unetich
I was eighteen when I first saw the trees in the Finger Lakes with leaves that weren’t
orange, or at least this was the first time I remember seeing them this way.
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The snow has started to fall again, laid as thick as it was last year in December;
blood-orange below the streetlights when the night is dark. This year, it is windy and the
snow blows through the street like a tornado. I wish the air was still, like sleep. Just
letting the snow fall to the ground like a feather, without noise.
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The field has many warm layers. I watch it from my bedroom window from the morning
to the time it takes on 4:00pm tawny pink shadows that skim the treetops, the surface of
the snow. In the cold dark, the sun has set and the blood-orange streetlight behind my
house turns on, searing and intense. My memory is the air it lights, the space my eyes
can see.
Kindergarten 