Snow Cathy Smith Bowers It was the only act of intimacy I ever witnessed between them----that joke my father told her, his opening line . . . I hope it snows so deep . . . and then how, for the punch, he reached out and pulled her to him, to whisper words that sent her red and slapping at his khaki shirt, and then her hand lifting to his chin to remove the little ghosts of cotton that fluttered there. Our teachers had sent us home from school, calling See you Monday that Thursday in December as we ran crazed into the schoolyard and to our separate houses to hold vigil for that white coming, that promise we wanted so badly to believe we could feel already, in the graying sky, its soft descent. All evening the heater roared its warmth into the room as we talked of snow-cream so cold it hurt your head, the fine spin a hubcap gives down a hill of white. But by the close of second shift, all that had shown was a stray, barking beneath the streetlight; our father in from the mill, blowing the night from his hands and telling that joke, his mouth burrowing into the smell of our mother's hair; and somewhere, breaking dim above the smokestacks, a few odd stars no one would admit to seeing. -- p2: defenestrate --

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