Charles Warnke

The term “black ice” is a misnomer. Nothing about the thin layer of ice that forms on roadways when condensation from automotive exhausts freezes is black in any way. If black ice was actually black it would be less dangerous, because in cloaking the medians and texture of asphalt with a solid sheet of black it would provide drivers with a visual alert as to the imminent hazard awaiting them.

A girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder.