The paint brushes only came out in winter. Caked in last years residue she would pull them from the box tucked into the stairwell cupboard and air out her smock like musty Christmas decorations. Stringing the half crumpled tubes out in the same order as she’d done the year before.

“I thought,” said her husband, arms crossed against his chest and shoulder resting against the door-frame of the open patio doors, “This time, that you had given up for good.”

Ankle deep in snow she shakes her head, the snowdrifts on her shoulders disintegrating into dust again.

“I couldn’t,” she tells him, paint poised above the canvas. White on white. “I haven’t captured it quite right yet.”

Snowstorm by Maurice de Vlaminck

As children we’d hope

For snows to fall thick and fast.

Grown, that joy has grayed.