White

It's just snowed, I'm 11yrs old, throwing my newspaper route.

Sweet sound of nothing fills the air
A fresh coat of white paint covers the ground,
And with it, all the ugliness and noise.
It is this silence, that I love the most.
That deafening, calming, nothingness, fills the air

The sound of my footsteps, shatter the blanket of white.
Sounds like a bulldozer, crunching over parked cars.
It's the only sound til I get to the flashing yellow stoplight at the corner. It adds to the melody with its click click, then scrunch scrunch. Click click, scrunch scrunch. A moment to cherish, I rule the world.

Everyone's asleep, and all sound is muffled by this new insulation. As I finish my route, I hear the first signs that I'm not alone on the moon, a distant snow plow, rumbling. Followed closely by a scrape, scrape, scrape of a Shovel on concrete. Soon the symphony is tuning up, a man scraping windows, then a police car, ruining the fresh coat of white paint, with his tracks in what was perfection.

As I stumble in my parents backdoor, I feel the heat from the furnace, and the smell of "home". It's 5am, I set my alarm clock, climb into bed, for the best hour and a half of sleep, in a lifetime.