spring of two o two four

Spring was supposedly the time when everything woke up, from the yawns of furry mammals to tiny green sprouts, from the earlier office hours of the sun to the tickling of a warmer breeze. Spring was supposed to ring the end of winter, to tell that life is beginning to wiggle, to flourish. Spring was supposed to brighten every corner of the world. Did it not?

But I didn’t know then, why I couldn’t take off my coat. I didn’t know why, the corner where I am standing was still dark. Why wasn’t there a beam of sunlight through my lungs? Why was that, new leaves wouldn’t pierce out of the trees in my yard? Was I still under the shade of winter? Still in winter? Clearly, everyone else around me was walking into the sunlight. Into spring.

I was left behind.

I was not dying, yet it was hard to say that I was living. My footsteps pointed, sprinted, desperately stretched towards spring. Shadows of winter trailed from one step ahead, trapping me in the crumply remains of an outworn season. I was mindlessly circling where nothing was alive except me. Or was I? Was I alive? I questioned my state of existence.

I didn’t realize until later, when winter was suddenly no longer there. It was mid-May, and scents of spring was already gone—carried by the slightest gust of summer. I realized that I was dead. Dead, buried under the snow. Dead, feet clinged to the ground, as if I didn’t want to leave winter. It was not winter holding onto me. It was me holding onto winter. 

When the snow melted, I was alive again.