Winter

The sun was slow to rise this morning. I've been noticing the days lasting longer. It's hard for me to put myself into winter, it's hard for me to stay still in my own body and mind. The cold, the monochrome vistas, the dark. I usually escape for a while. I'm here in body but my senses have flown south. It isn't like summer, when I can feel each bead of sweat as it rolls down my back, sometimes starting at the nape. It isn't like summer when I go for long walks and bike rides just to hear other people living through the open windows of my neighborhood. My favorite thing is to hear someone practicing a musical instrument, playing a song I know... I like to hear jazz being played unsteady and shaky through bloom scented air that sometimes smells of fragrant fish and gasoline as it drifts off the lake. Winter has failed to capture my attention the way every other month has and does. But I don't entirely put the blame on winter. My thin blood and penchant for dresses and scant tights rather than woolen sweaters and snow boots makes anything below 65 degrees Fahrenheit entirely unenticing. This morning though, I noticed the sun softening the window panes in my bedroom. A slight blue glow diffused by ivory lace. I noticed the light painted through the black wicker shades that hang in my bathroom. Only in winter would I see this light - fragmented on glass through the ice. I still feel distant, but the distance I feel sometimes comes into focus... the visible life - puff of cool air meeting my warm breath, crystallized water tapestries on glass, the bare branches and twigs individually encased in ice, my feet as they pat the ground and crunch the cold covering - sometimes slick, sometimes soft, sometimes a puddle masked by thin ice. Suddenly the cold snaps me back into place and I remember where I am. Looking down at my hands, I notice the dry cracks and breaking skin that cover my veins, veins that have pulsed freely for 933,947,758 seconds and counting. Plunging into the cold, I feel myself again.