February 2024

The world is impatient to get back to itself. It won’t say this outright, but there was a wind so busy, so fast, it pushed over one of the trees in the side yard. It’s leaning on the oak. It won’t be getting up with the rest of us in spring. 

The girl is listless. The sink is full. The cedar is tired of holding its gray branches up, asking to be green again. Even the birds are bored with their wintering. 

Everything is eager to try again. They’ve grown, they’ve shifted their feet, rolled their shoulders. They’re taller this year. 

It’s not time yet, though. Not quite. 

We have to sit in this. The barren time, when even the last of the winter berries are quietly collapsing. It’s okay. 

We’re okay. I’m not much to look at right now, but this is the furthest I can see all year. Myself and the house on the mountain, the house over the hill, the white house on the circle, we flash our lights to each other. To remember that we’re warmed from the inside. Remember we’ve got many little lives tinkering around in here that need kept from the cold. It’s hard out there. Just look at what the wind did to the tree in the side yard. 

No, myself and all the houses I can see are sure of this: everything will try again and fail again and love and lose and fall again, and we’ll be here, next winter, in the dead of it. Steady until spring. 

Trusting that everything will come back the same and different. The wind, blowing nowhere, fast. The bushes, thinking about growing out their bangs. The girl, gone down to the river empty handed, but bringing me back rose petals from the bank. 

Trusting, 

the apple house