Another Day

It snowed for the first time on Tuesday. The flakes fluttered like the leaves still do in the few minutes of cold. It lasted for maybe half an hour. 

The white specks settled on the ground, sprinkling my blue coat, as I walked to pick up my regular coffee order before my first class of the day. The snow melted in my hair, which was already in its natural waves, so I didn’t mind. My legs ached with each step, a new type of familiar exhaustion. My mornings are no longer my own so the snow woke me up for the second time that day, before my coffee. 

…

I used to always remember the first snowfall, I think to myself. Except for last year. Maybe it didn’t snow last year, or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. It never snows in November, and the flakes are gone before I know it; the day wanders as sunlight peeks through the trees that sway in heavy gusts of wind. The leaves still fall; time oddly slips away. 

The snow, I used to say to my friends, is enchanting. There’s a list of favorite words on my phone that I haven’t touched in two years, but the word enchanted has been at the top since the day I made it. Some words are there because they hold memories, some are emblematic in some elusive way, or some I simply just find beautiful. Words from the last sentences of the books I overanalyzed, the songs I overplayed in the car. The word elusive is also on the list. 

I would write the words and their respective phrases on lilac Post-it notes, stuck on my desk and closet doors and dresser, folded into my phone case or bag, where no one but I would ever see. Now, there’s not enough time to keep a Post-it note anywhere for long. Nothing stays long enough. I’ve been telling myself for weeks to write my to-do lists on the Post-it notes lost somewhere in my dorm, a plea to recover my old habits when my days have become unrecognizable. I don’t even know where I’d begin to look for them, the least of my priorities. 

…

Two Fridays ago, we had a conversation at dinner about what films would be thought-provoking to watch. You want to watch more movies, you said, to become more cultured, to reflect, to be more intellectual. To sit by yourself, immersed in art, to think. I, too, have always disliked wasting time watching movies unless they were, in fact, contemplative in nature. But you’ve already seen the ones I bring up—the ones I watched my senior year of high school. 

Today, when I walked along the river, I thought of the movie I could recommend to you. It was mostly dark out, dawn slowly breaking into wisps of pink and light. Besides the cars that rushed by, no one else was out this early as I debated texting you. I wondered if you even remembered us discussing this, and I decided that you had forgotten. And still, the ending of La La Land ruminated in my mind as the sun hazily rose. When it’s dark again at half past five, I’m by the river again and revisit the thought, and I decide against telling you, and I remember how it snowed. 

…

Three dresses are hanging in my room in shades of blues and blacks, all worn just once. One still has the tags on them, as if it could be returned. They don’t fit in my closet, but really, I don’t have the heart to fold them. They stay there for the rest of the week, the first thing I see when I wake up. They’ll stay there as the leaves fall. 

Now, it’s Sunday morning, and I open my window slightly to the sound of the wind rustling leaves and a quiet so soft it’s unsettling. 

In November, I find that it all settles anew. 

Meena Behringer ’27 (meenabehringer@college.harvard.edu) is the Arts Editor of the Independent.