The water is cold near this spring and I watch the first flakes of late autumn snow land on tree branches. The flakes form a textured coating resembling an artist’s touch. They fall like ashes playing amongst a thick mist hugging the forest. The mountain is somewhere behind these trees, somewhere behind these foothills. 
Wild mist is elusive, skittish, a feral kind of weather with no city lights to reflect the symmetry of urban yellows, greens, and reds.                                       The mist fools you into believing this stream does not follow a path of least resistance, but it does, even if it looks like it’s wandering, like a fragment, a lost sentence the mountain has thrown down upon uneven parchment. 
Soon the snow will cover everything, branches will be weighed down and the only thing seen is the creek slicing its way through white. 
I cup my hands, holding fingers together…tight. There’s a seam where they meet, one hand layered over the other. 

To be Published Schedule
Rooted Literary Magazine - 12-31-2025
Juste Milieu - Issue 19 - 2 Items!  Winter 2025
Press Pause Press - Volume 13 - Fall of 2026

Published
Muse-Pie Press - Issue #52 Fall 2025 https://www.musepiepress.com/