Something I wrote in my digital media class the other day... Totally off track.

This is a place I know, a place that reaches far beyond familiarity into the depths of what shaped my character. I know Spring. Yes, I know Spring and her green dressings, but I also know cold stretches of winter that encapsulate one's existence. I have felt that cold that stings one's lungs and numbs one's limbs. I remember winters when the ground was so cold that it took a great deal of work just to dig those holes into the ground to drop the corpses of our deceases family into. I remember stretching thick black tights on and buttoning my coat over layers of black. Black and blue mimesis. That is what I knew winter to be. I remember ice so thick that the tree limbs collapsed under the weight. I remember hearing of the how the ambulances came to the houses to steal the shells of the ones that passed into the other existence. I remember the cold hands against me as we hugged, trading condolences I wouldn't learn to understand until the last one passed. The cold inside was surmounted by the chill in their voices, uncertain of what they were to say. The winter witch took them, one by one by one. Stealing them until we didn't know what to cling to anymore, our stiches falling out, not one by one but as purposefully as my ancestors used to rip out wrongly made stitches in those heirloom quilts. I remember the horrifying stench of the hideous sprays of flowers people would send to the funeral home. That familiar funeral home I memorized like a maze puzzle in the comic section of Sunday's paper. That funeral home with it's faux-gilding and Bible verses covering every empty space. I wanted them all to go away, to realize that we'd never heal unless we could celebrate the coming of Spring. The newness. The births. I wanted to push them all away and tell them to cut themselves so they could watch their thick warm blood pour out of them. To tell them to CELEBRATE their being alive. The fact that their existence was concrete, that they were here and now was all they had. I wanted to stop supressing that smile that tried to creep its way across my face because I knew they would all be laughing if they knew we were crying over them. I remember the laughter, the stories of accidental rescues and hilarious catastrophes.

Yes, my body remembers Winter. Cold. Stark. Winter. But it also remembers what's lying underneath that solidly frozen soil. The tiny movements under the earth, sprouts turning greener with ever ice pellet that melted. And that is what continually keeps me going. That cycle. That promise of something greener and warmer. Something far from death.