My Body is a Barometer

The morning opens with a quiet ache -

not pain, exactly,

but the body remembering

to brace for the cold.

-

I feel it first in my spine,

a column that slowly tightens

like frost searching for the edge of the glass.

My bones know that the season is shifting

before the calendar does.

-

The kettle hums and rumbles in the kitchen.

I wait for the click before silence,

wrap both hands around the mug

like I could convince the warmth

to lubricate the stiffening joints of my hands.

It doesn't listen.

It never does.

-

The air carries a sharper breath today,

metallic and clean,

slicing into the tissues of my lungs.

My joints answer in their own creaking song:

small protests,

tiny conversations in cartilage,

the rubbing of frosted hinges.

When I move,

I hear the sound of the quiet thunder

waiting beneath my skin.

-

Outside, frost feathers the porch boards.

The steps sigh and squeal beneath my weight.

Every motion feels translated

into the language of the cold.

Slowed. Deliberate.

As if my body is whispering

careful now, be careful.

-

The cold smells like smoke,

like pine in the distance,

and cedar burning in wood stoves.

It slides between layers of wool and cotton,

finds its way to the place

in the hollow of my collarbone.

A reminder of breath,

of being alive,

when the earth settles in for a nap.

-

Later, I'll move easier,

the way ice melts from the windshield

beneath a weak ray of sunlight.

But for now, I am the barometer,

reading the pressure of the seasons

in ache and pulse and gasp,

in the quiet refusal of warmth to linger.

-

And still,

I lift the mug to my lips,

inhale the scent of waking,

and call this knowing:

a forecast etches into my bones.