March

March

March comes when you least expect it to. You are still recovering from January’s freeze. There are icicles clinging to your eyelashes from all the crying done in February.

Crows start gathering in the garden below the picture window. The winds blow, but they are no longer howling. There is a tickle in your nose. Spring allergens. They’ve come to roost.

The sun holds on at high noon. It beats down on the suburbanites shuffling to lunch. It pierces your retinas when you head out to the garden for afternoon tea.

Bees buzz, replacing the wood splitters’ saw. March has its own frequency. You feel it just under your skin’s third layer. You can feel change crawling its way out. You can’t stuff anything back now like you did all winter because it’s melting. Higher temperatures, lower mood. This is how it overtakes you.

It’s always going to be odd to others. Who can be sad in spring and summer when there are so many colors about? When you wear lighter and brighter fabrics? When you can swim and tan and barbecue and socialize and all of these things that so many others like to do? Everyone except for you.

The heat hurts. It stifles you. It makes you feel as if you are encased in needles and there will never be any escape from it. Your eyes are not like others. Yours see so much better in the dark. Yours shine in the cloudy grey of an Autumn day.

Your eyes can often see past that which is right in front of you. Sometimes this sight is fear driven. Sometimes others have convinced you that you’ve imagined some of what you see, and especially some of what you have already seen. Other times, you believe God is showing you things. These are the things that make the most sense. There are the things you’ve stopped sharing because the whole world thinks you’re crazy enough.

Your body and mind both go through a transitional phase in March. There is a sense of cocooning that occurs. A shunning of all social graces. A tightening of muscles. A shortness of breath. A farewell to snowfall. A grieving of the longest nights.

You are a bud blooming too. Your brain starts to sprout its own memory patch that becomes overgrown too quickly by sinister and staticky weeds. There are beautiful colors inside your mind as well. Technicolor poms. Fireworks. Sizzling trails that start to manifest in waking life. These streaks of celestial whispers form auras around everything that lives and breathes. They cloud around inanimate objects too. They surround man-made luxuries. And rocks. Stones. Streams. You are entombed in a day-glo dream but only during daylight. In sleep, you live a different sort of nightmare. You remember too harshly the summers that have passed.

You know you have no control over this. You’ve tried to get your grip on it. You’ve tried to wrestle it away. You’ve tried forcing yourself to feel as others say you should. You have taken every pill. Every potion. Done every breath exercise. Inhaled or ingested every remedy for forgetting recommended by everyone with something to forget. You have tried running but you never get very far.

It is no surprise to you that there are others out there, hiding, just as you are, who feel as you do. It is no surprise that those closest to you can often make you feel the most lonely. It is no surprise that most of your time spent is wishing you were someone else.

Daylight is saved during March. You become lost in March. Parts of you go missing. Parts of you return.

There is no butterfly that emerges at the end of this metamorphosis. There is no prize winning indigo rose emerging from the soil. There is no makeover happening. March is not your prepping time for your summer debut.

March is a signal. A warning sign. There are electric storms on the horizon for you. There are blackout shades on the windows. The crows peck at them from time to time.


(March 7, 2018)


Note: An oldie, but a goodie that’s still fitting. I keep looking at old writing with new pandemic time eyes. Some things are so different. Others are exactly the same.