She leaves the house that morning in the grey of day, the eastern sky just beginning to bleed dawn's light. The light grows and the music rolls out of her car's speakers, bubbling over with the love of God: My Jesus makes all things new... It's truth, glorious truth, yet never hers. A yearning for some semblance, some feeling (yes, she's a silly human with a craving to feel) of that newness fills her with heedless impulse. She rolls down the one window she can reach without taking the car off the road. Cold air washes water-like over her. The long grass from a nearby field waves as she passes by, seized by the joy of the moment.

The air isn't cold anymore--it's freezing--and she shivers a little and thinks her hair is a mess and she's on her way to classes and the guy in the truck she just passed definitely looked at her like an escapee from a white padded cell. But the small, finiteness of shivering with cold and the uncontrolled nature of her hair and expression seems to perfect the moment somehow.

She grips the wheel with slightly-numbed fingers and turns her eyes to the road, her mind running wildly through a field of swaying grass.

She's shaking with cold. She's never been warmer.

1 Comment

1. MJC on April 18, 2009 at 5:21 PM

   I like this a lot. A lot; did I mention that? It gets a little unruly and untamed in the paragraph starting with "The air isn't cold anymore..." but you recover well at the finish. Really good, Ana.