The last rites of winter are a dry heave.
Spring is the moment you stop vomiting and catch your breath in the hollow of a toilet. All done with your spitting and sputtering, still holding the sides. Slowly pushing back to a forgiving tile. And trusting that the dog days are over.
Spring asks too much of me.
I’m too faithless, suspicious even, to be so certain. My atoms phase in and out. I close my buffering eyes to all the ambient, pleading murmurs. People who didn’t think it could come to this and come for them. But some move quietly. Hitching along, running on a limp. Not hoping. Or assuming. But moving. Not safe to expect. Nor be anyone’s Fool.
Like all children, the Spring child is still part-dead.
And it gives because it doesn’t know. It plumes its stringy arms and I feel the salty nausea of worry.
Spring sleepwalks into being like a child in traffic.
It doesn’t know. And it scares me shitless.
Their spongy animal body is the precious, reckless Is sprung from an Isn’t they don’t remember.
Immodestly awake. Clearer than a mirror. Like snap peas strung about the kitchen floor.
It keeps its horrible promise. It gives, and asks you to be its Fool
A few months more.
And trust that life continues.