I remember the first time it happened.

My children hid in the house and stared—

fear shining brightly in their youthful eyes—from

behind our purple window curtains

while they took great gulps of hot chocolate,

and burned their throats in haste.

A year later, fear couldn’t restrain them

because they remembered last year’s miserable

joke of a Christmas.  They tied

white pillowcases around their necks,

built a huge lumpy snowman, and

battled it gallantly to save the world.

They deflected evil blasts of power (their

mother volunteered to throw), but it

stained their capes and faces.

The third year, my daughter was “too old” to

play, but my son pulled me out by the hand while it

snowed.  He spun, arms flung out and face to the sky,

pretending it was fine; his eyes stayed clamped shut.

I turned more slowly and studied my world for the

first time.  It looked like the shattered lands

of my son’s video games, broken and

teaming with dark monsters, children

playing in the black snow.  No one

cared any more.  I hunched my shoulders and

hurried back inside, tempting my son with hot chocolate.

I feel like black snow this year as my wife and I

stare out the window, between purple curtains I

never liked.  Our daughter sits in the middle of our black yard,

pretending the snow is white again. 

I take too large a swallow of scolding tea and

burn my throat, but it doesn’t matter because

pain always haunts me now.  My

son died last week, in the first snowfall of the year.

He ran into the street shouting because it was

white, and a great black van ran him over.

The snow turned black again after that.