Wind.

"Is that rain?"  I threw open the front door.  Rainless wind tore across the yard, ripping leaves from trees and strewing them along the street.  Like soldiers attacking a bastion, the wind battered against the house all night long.  When it would wake me, I lay in bed with my head under a barricade of blankets, listening to the sounds like sirens, like wolfs howling in derision.

The wind is gone this morning, but its story is not.  On my way to school this morning, I passed a little brick house.  Four children and their mother were crowded in the front window, staring out at the tree smashed against their house. Trees are lying--like corpses of soldiers--in the streets.  The last vestige of orange leaves has been torn from the trees that still stand.

Downtown all the power is out.  The dark shops are like the first breath of a ghost town.  When I got to school, it too was dark.  Students milled around the commons room, unsure if there would be classes.  I decided there wouldn't be and skipped back home through the blue-skyed aftermath of the storm.

A stack of books sits in front of me.  Latin needs to be read.  But I just might bundle up again and return to the story of the wind.