The winter makes you forget.
The heaters mumble, the winds whine,
the floorboards moan and groan,
their wood aching with the cold.
When three layers is not enough,
when the snowflakes feel like knife blades,
when you can barely move your fingers –
well, it’s hard to remember
that someday you’ll feel the warmth again.
When I recall a memory,
I call up the snapshots,
the colors and blurs of motion,
the sounds around me,
but never the heat upon my skin.
Never the hair stuck to my neck,
or the fabric clutching my back.
Maybe that’s why winter seems neverending –
because it makes us forget
that times moves forward
and the cold is not forever.