The weatherman was always wrong. Why couldn’t he have been wrong this time? The woman did her best to snuggle her knees to her chest and pull her body back under the overhang. The concrete stair she laid upon was frozen. Paused for eternity, this frozen night lingered for all of eternity. Her layers of thin clothes did not begin to warm her body. She rested her head on a cardboard box taken from beside the dumpster. She sought the refuge of sleep but her toes and hands and cheeks kept protesting the cold.

She remembered it. Focusing on it’s memory, hoping it would bring her some warmth. She must have been eleven years old. Her body in the warm house in clean but hand me down jammies. A little too old to sleep in her parent’s bed, still she tiptoed into her parents’ room…the door squeaked as she cracked…