A Spring Ache

The land slumbers, somewhere beneath ribs of white. Spring pulses. Faintly, shyly. It doesn’t yet dust the tree branches with life. It doesn’t yet color the snow with streaks of earth. The grass still drowns, but I know that, in my heart, it reaches heavenward, the same way I reach to catch the sunlight with parched fingers. There is still cold. This bone-biting, skin-curling cold. But underneath its suds, there is the mildewed tang of the new season, this alkaline undertone that promises rain and, under its tail-end, the sweet rot of petrichor.

I ache for the first walks, when the soil crests and wrinkles with stiffness. I long for the first warmth, this fledgling pact that binds us all in hope that longer days are afoot and that, with their stretch, comes the toothsome sap of wild strawberries and the purple dew of lilac’s redolence.

I dream of it. This moment when the spark in my eye rekindles with plans and possibilities, when depression recedes like the tide turned away by the shore. I will thrive then, trussed in morning mists and coddled with the sway of stubborn dandelions.

But for now, the land still slumbers, somewhere beneath ribs of white.

And I wait in winter’s garish last breath,

for the sweet agony that it deserves.

May it die swiftly.

And from the decay of its bones birth the world anew.