The old man stood in the sudden eye of the snowstorm, silhouetted by the pale lights from his distant house. There were no trees to protect him from the bitter wind that chose to blow across the land, but he didn't care. They were friends of old, the man and the wind. They had butted heads many a time in his eighty-three winters, and this time he had come prepared, wearing his favorite goose-down jacket, armor for their battle.

He stood there for a long time, watching as the thick cloud of moisture escaping his lips deteriorated into wisps, quickly stolen by his rival. He grew tired of his game with the wind, and conceded with a painful grin on cracked lips, turning his back. He noticed his shadow then, an ugly gray thing surrounded by a sea of white, laced with so many newborn diamonds. The old man had always hated to be the first to wade through fresh snow. He never wanted to be the one to make the first impression, the first to change the landscape. He had always been an opponent of change, as well as the wind.

He thought of his house. Who would get it when he was gone? What would happen to all of his things? Would they tear it down for a new shopping mall all the kids seemed to love these days? Questions he knew that he could never have answered. Questions he had no reason asking.

He scolded himself then, for the momentary thought of what it would have been like to have children, ready and willing to inherit the home they were raised in. The old man and his wife had never had kids...never really had room for them in their busy lives until they were retired and too old to take care of anything other than an old coon dog their neighbor, her brother, had given them. And even that dog had died long before his wife had passed on, just four long months ago. The old man sighed. There would be no one to miss him when he was gone. He was just one more frozen leaf, forgotten by the fall, clinging stingily to a tree. No fanfare...no goodbyes. He just anxiously awaited the sturdy pine box that would be his, buried in this field, the ground he now stood on becoming the bed he and his wife would share for eternity. If he turned to his left he would be able to make out the odd shape that was his wife's tombstone, her final resting place being within sight of the home they had called their own since their marriage, when he was sixteen, and her fourteen. Thinking about beds made the old man realize how tired he really was. He decided to take a short nap in the snow, sleeping with the wife he so missed once more.

He closed his eyes and lay there then, in the snow, making shapes with his weak arms as he had when he was a child. The snow began to fall again. When the flakes touched his face, he opened his eyes, to watch the snow flutter all around him. Like falling angels, full of grace, come to lead him home.

Travis Hall (AL) is an English major at Morehead State University. His work has appeared in The Troublesome Creek Times, The North American Anthology of Poetry, The Writer's Hood, and elsewhere.