There was some connection to be made—your death, the election, the absurd snow—and I charged myself with making it, walkingdown Court Street after therapy, passing undermantled elms, watching the skaters' anklesbrace against the weight of their careening.In the rink's center, a girl spun herself into a smalltorpedo, red coat flaring conical, dark hat poking outlike a singed wick. She was likely half my agethough it was clear she possessed something alreadyI had no hope of ever developing. My lot was to watch—to lift the velvet rope and lead her image throughthe darkly papered corridor of thought and recordthe way it changed what preexisted it. As I startedsouth, the fat flakes hardened into white gravel. Poisonwafted off the newsstands in vaporous wings.With every step, I felt the girl complete another turninside me, flung on by her own centrifugal will.Because I couldn't stand to face the other figuresin my mind, I studied her the whole walk home—her thrown head, cinched laces, her skate etchinglanguage into me with its bright blade. When I fitmy house key in the lock, her spinning slowed. WhenI passed your photo on the wall, it started up again.