Micah (excerpt)

Micah sat and watched the sky fall from above him—snow collided softly with his eyelashes. He could have looked away, but on this day he wanted to feel everything. He had been silently cursing his fate all morning, or at least since he had overheard someone say it was snowing upside—his first day out and no blue sky to greet him.

He had never realized how amazing a snowfall could be. Not just the flakes. He had known from an early age how fun they could be. Now he focused on the fall. White fell from white. The sky was shedding its skin to welcome him back, to let him know it wanted him.

He thought the sky must be wise. If it had greeted him with a blue face, full of sunshine, he would have forgotten it and spent the first of his three free days spoiling himself. He had begun to let himself absorb the other men’s dreams of three days of rest under the sky and of strong drink. Now, as they sat grumbling in the station pub, he let the flakes bless him on their fall to the ground.

He knew it was silly to feel that the sky was giving a special gift to him, but he could not help noticing he was the only one appreciating it. He thought, “This is what I have given my life to. This beauty. This wise old beauty that shows itself in many things, in billions of unobserved instances.” He decided he liked this thought, so he penned it in his journal. When he realized his hands were too cold to write very well, he took one last glimpse at the sky and went in to join the others.