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It happens slowly. Every day I look at the pond on campus, and I can see the ice slowly conquering the entire expanse of water. It is a war that happens every winter, and every winter the ice wins. Like a virus, it starts from a single point somewhere on the pond and spreads. When it cannot spread any further out, the ice spreads up, reaching for the sky like tiny skyscrapers in a frozen city, all competing to be the tallest, competing to cover the most area. Soon the densely packed molecules will be so thick that the water underneath will cease to be visible.

The ice seems to creep too slowly to be observed, but I can see it invading new territory every day. It looks like concrete, not perfectly translucent like the cubes in your drink, but opaque and grayish-white like the cement on a newer patch of sidewalk (before too much oil, blood, and coffee have been spilled on it and have turned it a darker color). The strange thing about ice is that it is never static. Like a city, it is either prospering or it is in decline; there is no third option. With the expansion into new territory, the frost is guaranteed survival, but with every recession, every day that warmth recaptures some water, the ice is reminded of its unavoidable destiny come spring.
Some days, when I walk to class next to the pond, I can't help but break the ice, just to see the water underneath. I throw stones into the pond, and then I watch as the water bubbles up from below, giving it a brief release from its wintry prison. With every warm day, I am filled with hope that soon the frost will be gone, but it seems that until April the warmth never lasts, and the ice always recaptures any open water rescued by the heat of the sun.
Until spring comes, I must imagine what the open water looks like; I must imagine what the pond is like without the thick ice covering it.
It happens slowly. Every time I go home, I notice something new. Since I started college two and a half years ago, the once small business district in my hometown has grown exponentially. The last time that I was home there was not an AMC movie theater downtown. Two years ago there was not a trendy coffeehouse-style restaurant. There definitely was not a Kinko's copy shop. My hometown is being inundated by these cold buildings that spread themselves over all of the open land where I used to play as a child. I think that soon I won't be able to see anything but concrete in my hometown.
What happened? Whenever I go home I see something that

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