Sensory Tale

You wake disoriented to a muted world in color and sound, as though someone has thrown a sheet of tulle over your eyes and covered your ears with his hands.

You shower, feeling cocooned in warmth, letting the water drizzle over your body for a few extra minutes.

Later, you stand outside, face up feeling the flakes peppering your skin and hanging on your eyelashes. You blink to melt one as another takes its place.

The silence is broken momentarily as a neighbor's tires hum and pop along the snow-covered road, the sounds grow louder then fade back into the quiet.

Maybe you lie down then, your arms and legs swish-swishing through the frozen blanket around you. You stop, surrounded by an angel, and stick out your tongue to catch just one flake. You can hear them hitting the trees, the ground, you...tiny pings as though grains of rice being poured into a measuring cup.

Inside again, you wrap your red fingers around the warm mug and take tentative sips of hot chocolate, warming again, inside out.