Winter’s gonna end, I’m gonna clean these veins again
So close to dying that I finally can start livin’
An Attempt to Tip the Scales – Bright Eyes
Why has anyone chosen to live in a place where it’s winter? Where half the year is a living death. Where the color bleeds away with the leaves, dissolving deep into the soil before the freeze. Without my even noticing, the bird songs have all gone silent. I hardly ever realize until I feel that fluttering joy in my chest in the bleary moments of morning as they slowly begin to return bit by bit. A half asleep smile reminds me of the sun.
I see flashes of it through half lidded eyes. Those days where the air was warm and thick. When the light penetrated everything and soaked us all in pulsing heat. The heartbeat of existence ever so lightly touching the finest hair on exposed skin, tickling and translucent. These memories are stale now like old photographs. A hollow nostalgia for what’s been lost.
Abandoned each season by love, by heat, by life itself. Left alone in a silent, grey vacuum. The absence of everything. Even what’s inside. The very air around me, turned sharp. I must tether myself to hope, to the reluctant reassurance of spring. Glistening diamonds spread across snow remind me that the sun still lingers here. Whispered promises of her return.
Soon the earth with burst forth from this frozen tomb. The colorful explosion of unfurling leaves, the small scurrying sounds of our mother’s smallest beasts. The air will fill again with song. And surely, surely so will my heart.
Protect the Innocent 