on the first day of Spring —
not the almanac’s child, who arrives with a suitcase
in the early hours of a March morning, my bleary heart stumbling to let in, tripping over
small shrines to Winter set out by the door
and for whom I feel forever unready, Spring in name
but not in practice, still, the tulip fields waking with frosted lips,
still, your reaching hands for the thicker coat, still, the heavy blue inside you that feels at home in grey weather —
but the one I find myself singing into
climbing the Main Street hill
as the new sun lights the city from the inside out
and the roads warm the tires pressing slow kisses
into their open palm
and the tail-end of the cherry trees confetti us in place
I move slowly through
with the glass eyes of heartbreak
I am seeing the way the people open doors to the grocers, the breweries, the second-hand bookstores
like they have been shut inside themselves for endless months
how they walk through the sunshine hesitant
unsure of handing over hope too quickly
how they move like a people who have warred a winter
that they won’t ever forget
there is something to a city that wakes to spring
carefully, legs like easels, their grateful hands still afraid of a coming slap
their warming bodies stepping out of the darker months
with stones in their pockets.
CarnivalDark 