There is something in the air, I thought. I leaned my face upward toward the stars and closed my eyes. The coolness of the wet snow, glazing my face and settling onto my lashes, was purifying. There is something here. 

I was atop the hill on Fremont Ave walking downward toward number 1929 which was alit in blue holiday lights. The trees were now bare, their creaking limbs reaching upward with my face, blackened silhouettes as the streetlights flickered from beneath and below them.

I purposefully stopped. I was now in the center of the street. It was midnight; I wasn’t afraid of a car interrupting me.

The street carved out ahead of me. Snow had already fallen, enough to lay a carpeting of slushied ice and burrowed car tracks. Vehicles nestled onto both sides of the road, their patrons dutifully in their homes, curled up alongside each other or craving affection or sorrowing or dreaming in a way that I’ll never know.

The quiet was speaking.

I walked as though in a controlled trance. Pulling my face back upward, the sky beckoned to me with a gloss of starlight, rubbed dull from the city lights not so far away. I knew what was there, beneath the gloss of gray and black and rubbed out whitened hues.

And the stars knew I was there, too.

I walked, down the middle of Fremont Ave, surefooted and alive. There was a forgotten security in the gentle snow and wind.