2/90, in the a.m.

I should know better than to wear my suede flats in January. I gave myself small up's for remembering to put my trouser socks on. I had my hat with its ear flaps and chin strap. My hands in my coat pockets where wearing gloves, though I wore my thins ones--to better match my coat and shoes.

As the split at the bend of my foot, in the middle of the plastic strip that serves as the sole of my shoe, began to fill with snow and cause my flat foot to roll over and twist a bit, I started watching each step a bit more carefully.

This is how I noticed it. The flimsy, plastic tube of lipgloss, its screw-on cap a bit to the side like its neck was broken. I could still tell what color it was; it hadn't been on the sidewalk before the snow fell. Bending a bit, I saw the silver flakes mixed with the strawberry tint. I knew that at the store, it had been labeled "frost," and this seemed appropriate.

I thought of freezer pops, the rows of connected sugar ice that fill the freezer each May and are found later, in November maybe, while packing extra turkey away. I thought of the syrup loosening between your fingers as your crunch the plastic between thumb and index.

I stepped on the tube, expecting the same crunch, similar to the feel of the snow balled where my arch should be. Or I expected the cap to shoot off from the stress of the cold and the force of the fluid.

Nothing happened. I licked my lips, dry because I'd forgotten my chapstick, bleeding a bit at the corner from biting against my shivers. If it was not frozen and it was not cracking and the cap was on, how long had it been here? How long is too long when the cap is still on? How long is long enough to kill the germs from its former owner? How many people would see me pick it up and put it to my lips?

Several. I walked on to my car and dug the snow from my shoes, watching it melt into the mats, beneath the accelerator.