Snowfall

A man walks out in a dream when, above him, his daughter starts snowing. By the time he knows it is her, a few flakes fall to the ground, on him, and melt. At the thought of losing her, he panics, but then he realizes the snow is endless and, besides, she is already dead. Panic gives in to grief. He stands in the street, in front of the house where he grew up, but cannot see it, nothing can be seen, except the erasures of white drifts. At some point he discovers that when he looks up the daughter-particles surge, as if pushed by a draft, then they resume their sliding downward, not unlike stirring floaters when you move your eyes or the way atoms slow down, even walk back in time, when you observe them. As a physicist, he knows this is the quantum Zeno effect. He tells himself, “If I can hold all of her in my eyes, I can delay her and keep her forever.” Then he does just that: he catches in his sight one snowflake at a time, in each tendril of his heart, then another, and another, the way a juggler holds, on spinning poles, white plates in the air, tending to each, from time to time, so they don't fall shattering on the ground. When he finally holds them all, he and his daughter are face to face, fingers interlocked, beings intertwined, and she is too loved to be falling and melting, while he is too needed, grieving, and concentrated to wake up. __ Note: The Quantum Zeno Effect is a quantum mechanical phenomenon where frequent measurements/observations of a quantum system can prevent it from changing its state, effectively slowing it down or even freezing its evolution.