Cold bright clear light everywhere -- ricocheting off snow, stretching the dome of the sky like a taut blue balloon, sluicing into the apartment through every window. I want to drink it in deep thirsty gulps, the cold of it making the back of my throat numb, the cold of it washing away the hot ache in my chest, the cold of it easing the tight muscular lump of things better left unsaid.

Yesterday, tuned too tightly, like the E string on a violin pitched sharp. My friends, who understand that poor intonation isn't a capital offense, even for a lapsed musician, calling me back in the dark and making me laugh.

Today I won't worry so much about feeling like a mollusk without its shell. So what.

Yesterday there was slipperiness and flakes sifting anxiously through the air as if some terribly important thing was being ground down in a lapidary shop. Today, though, there is just all this clean cold light. How could I not claim it for my own and call it joy?