where sound was frozen

There were cold nights in Boston, passing by the Tower Records and the Berklee School of music, over the Turnpike bundled up against the snow and harbor breeze. The snow would turn to ice and become crunchy underfoot, and dirty. Street vendors pushing carts with pretzels and hot dogs and coffee sometimes. I was always on the outside, finding myself excluded from notice, and I was always on the inside, immersed in my art, placing my feelings on paper, curious about the life. Outside of the storefront cast light, in the parks and alleys and coves of huddled homelessness, out by the swan boats the snow was blue and the fountainheads underwater under ice, where even sound was frozen. I knew then and there, in the stillness, I was chosen.