snow day

[note #52]

I woke up this morning to this—the snow they all said would come was here and still falling. A band of cold covers the map, all the way down to Texas.

The radio is on softly as I write this, now about the murder of Alex Pretti, shot in the back.

First Good, now Pretti.

Shot ten times while helping a woman who’d been knocked to the ground.

Who knocked her down? Who told them to shoot?

Pretti and Good.

He was a nurse, she was a poet.

How are we doing, pretty good, meaning could be better, meaning not so good.

Last night I spent an hour watching my best friend’s three-year-old daughter. My friend had been in the hospital for days while her partner gave birth. The birth had been complicated, they had been in it for days, but now they were on the other side. I brought my friend a bag of food she could take back to the hospital. I played with her daughter while she showered. I asked the child about her new sister, she said her hair was brown and her body was white. Like her, she’s half Palestinian, half Jewish, but we didn’t talk about that. She then decided to eat my belly, then eat my head.

Snow is falling on all of us.

Children are still being born.