April Smith

they crossed a drawbridge over a quiet inlet she caught sight of herself in the window and thought, Cora, close your mouth, you look like a kid on Christmas morning.

The air was calm and insects had not yet risen off the water, that crisp time of morning before the sun strikes, when it is still cool enough to work out solutions to sticky problems.

His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.