A Short Piece of Prose

The grass crunched underneath my boots as I walked to my car. I pulled out of my parking spot carefully so I didn’t slide around on the thick layer of ice concealing the pavement. I turned left on the street and came to a gentle pause at the stop sign. I traveled the back road to John Dale Lane, toward the main road, Barker Street. I eased my way forward and kept a lookout for the herds of deer—usually a mom and her fawn, wobbling on all fours, awakening with the sun. They often liked to play peek-a-boo from behind the wintry brush across from the street’s apartment buildings. I didn’t see any this time, but I was always hopeful. 

As I turned left down John Dale Lane, I looked up at the drowsy trees, their branches weighed down by crystallized ice structures deposited by yesterday’s sleet storm. They lined the back road on both sides, creating a vignette of pure white snow around the path and a halo formed by apricity. I looked left toward the open field, a safe space where more deer liked to gather, their dotted eyes detected only when the occasional harsh glow from a set of headlights passed through.

I reached the canal, which ran the entire length of the main road, and I caught breathless views of small glimmering waves, thawing underneath the sun. I was passing through a snow-capped mountain village—a ski town before its peak season. It didn’t feel like Oak Park anymore, my only place of residency, the place people refuse to call by name, a ghost town too small to remember. Today it felt like a place where Edward Hopper paintings came to life or where a Steinbeck character hibernated in his cabin and wrote the greatest stories of American literature. I was still a small town girl at heart, and so much heart I still had.