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heavier coat. My fingers were red with the cold, and the tips of my breasts grew hard enough to spread pain through my upper body. The smell of winter, of ice crystals and frozen earth, spun through the air. I relit the candle. It was already ruined for selling; no one would buy a black wick. Seeing the light turn gold and amber on the cobblestones warmed me more than that small flame.
    A tear slipped from the inner corner of my eye. I gasped to fight it, but it slid easily down my cheek. I pulled my knees into me, shielding the candles. Wind brushed the back of my neck, and as I fell asleep I imagined it was my abuela stroking my hair. In those last few moments before I slept, I thought I saw her in the light on the still fountain water, laughing and kneading dough with the heels of her hands.
    I woke up to snowflakes spinning in the dark, each catching the moon through the clouds. A light layer of snow stuck to the cobblestones in the plaza . I would have found it beautiful
if I hadn’t been so cold. I shivered off the dusting on my shoulders and lap. My body was stiff. I felt as brittle as new ice. The candle had gone out; the wick was damp and dotted with snowflakes. It would not light again, no matter how many matches I spent on it.
    The feeling went out of the tips of my fingers. Lighting another candle, one with a dry, new wick, would at least give me that little light to hold my hands near. The glow in my corner of la plaza would turn the snow to gold.
    The candle flickered to life, and I saw my abuela again, the shape of her in threads of light. But snowflakes stuck to the wick and put the candle out. I lit the next one, and my abuela appeared from the light, this time sewing a dress I had torn playing in the rose bushes. The snow dampened the wick again, and it dimmed. I lit the next, not caring that I wouldn’t be able to sell it, and I saw her cutting roses from the same bushes. I lit the one after that, and the one after that. Each time the snow, falling harder now, put out the flame and ruined the wick.
    The last candle went out. I tried to light it again, but the flame wouldn’t take. I tried each of the others, but they had soaked through. I tried until the book of matches was nothing but stubs. A tear froze just below my eye, and the ice stung my cheek. The cold prickled, then deepened, the sting of rose thorns turning to the pierce of a scorpion’s barb. Snowflakes gathered on my eyelashes so that the whole world shimmered with ice.
    A falling star broke through the clouds and streaked to earth, and the light slowly went out of the world. I remembered my abuela telling me about los meteoros . If I saw one, she said, it meant one of only two things: a soul was being welcomed into heaven, or two souls had fallen in love and were becoming one. “They’re close, no, m’ija? ” she had always asked.
    I thought I was dead by the time I saw him. I thought the
green of Roman’s eyes was the last thing I would think of before I met my abuela again. Strange, how much I must have wanted him, even from those few moments in the rose candle’s light, that I would think of him then.
    Roman put his hands on the sides of my face, and the warmth of his palms felt so good it tore a scream from me. The sleeves of his jacket smelled like ash tree bark in summer. The hollow of his neck shared the same color and scent as agave nectar. I was all ice now, and the warmth of him was breaking me. He put his jacket around me, and the lining held so much of his heat that I thought it would splinter me into snowflakes.
    He shook me to get me to look at him. “Stay with me, okay?”
    His breath was hot against my mouth, and my lips stung with thawing. He put my arm around his shoulder and picked me up off the steps. My body was too numb to fight him or hold onto him. I was still dying, and though I felt the warmth of Roman’s chest against my cheek, I could still see the falling star.
    He shook me gently. “Don’t fall