To Burn a Bridge, and Build One

The remarkably cold Winter has made this place the City of Dead Trees, but there are hints now and then that life is coming back to the land.  Every now and then Spring dances through, brief nymph glimpses of what we are likely to miss entirely this year.  Freezing Winter straight to steaming Summer is my guess.  I've been here since August, snow came in mid November, but the cold has lasted two years in my bones.  It has been so long since I've felt warmth that I'm not sure I'll know what to do with it if sunlight tries to penetrate.  Maybe I should take Seth as an example and see if I can shed a layer, maybe two. 

Though instincts and biology allow him a smooth transition, I'm not sure he remembers what it's like to be warm either, but he's anxious to find out.  Each walk we take he seems to be rushing toward something.  Maybe he thinks that if he runs swiftly enough across ice patches and melting snow he'll take us both to somewhere warmer.  In truth, we're both preparing to run free, glancing at one another with nods of go- ahead-approval.
It was 71 and sunny in Ohio today.  The Seasons conspired for an April Fool's joke like no other, and I'm dreading tomorrow with such ferocity that I refuse to check to see what the weather is believed to be even as one in the morning approaches and I know I must catch some Z's, snores, and dream phantoms before six.  I cannot say I'm excited for tomorrow's work day, or this coming Friday which will prove to be yet another Beginning of an End, but like the cold outside and the chill inside, I'll learn to deal with it as I breathe through and imagine warmth.

A Valentine's Day yellow rose that  I ink scrolled.

Spring brings a lot of questions with the returning birds and bud blossoms.  As conversation arises on relationships, commitment, running, pasts, futures, and space -- I wonder if I will ever be able to settle, comfortably.  Not just with a person, or in a particular way of living, but yes - those too.  It's just, as I think of removing myself from one person's life and adding pieces of me to another's, all I seem to actually want to do is place a bookshelf against a wall and unpack boxes of books no one else wanted.  Then I laugh, of course, because it's nearly one in the morning and I'm speaking in symbols and metaphors that mean nothing, and everything.  On cue, to finish my thoughts for the evening, "Islands" by the Xx.