Today I walked to the grocery store under a recycled-paper sky, stepping carefully along the sidewalk, which was smothered with ice and ashy snow.
On days like today the world is jagged: it crunches below my feet like glass, and the air breaks into my lungs in shattered bits. But there is peace along this path of gray, the small glimmer that the birch holds in its promise to bud.
Soon the colors of this smeared graphite world will fill in, and the cold empty place will seem to have only been a dream. This is the wonder of seasons, as they relieve and surprise us again and again.