Midwinter

Winter sinks its teeth into my skin, burrows into my bones and makes a home for itself. There are few moments where I feel more alone than when I am walking, frigid and shivering, my breath coalescing in the air before me, reminiscent of smoke from an old man’s pipe; but I am not yet old, and I do not smoke, and despite my life still winding before me I feel aged and heartless and alone. Today I empathize with snowflakes caught in a hibernal spider’s web, which should have had longer to tilt their crystalline arms to the sky and twirl and laugh.