Parking Lot
You had to admit that it had a kind of mechanical serenity to it, the way the snow piled up just so against the fences, how the steam slanted west just like that, how the cars still seemed to reach some sort of order even though the parking lot was just a bumpy white canvas smeared with ice and dirty tire tracks. In spite of just how artificial it was, it still seemed natural – as natural as the trees that once covered the field the asphalt paved over, now merely pockmarking the few remaining patches of soil. It was man-made, but it was right, probably because it was man-made. There was something universal in those dingy beige buildings, something identifiable in the faceless pseudo-monoliths that towered above the humanity that destroyed the landscape to build them. Looking at them gave a peace that few felt when walking through their doors; and at night, when the streetlamps lit up, blotting out the moon and the night sky, one felt safe.