It’s the season when the snow that smoothed the landscape removes itself to the underground. It returns to Hades, swaps places with Persephone.

All the variations in the landscape (and their brothers the imperfections) are obvious now. Specifically, the refuse that was trapped in between layers of snowstorms has collapsed onto the surface in a single plane. All the trash laid out on display.

Snow still remains in the darkest corners of the neighborhood, hillside or mountaintop.  It is spotlighting the superior hiding place s for hide-and-seek; the last bastion of winter, where Narnia’s White Witch still maintains a foothold.

The locals have placed bets on when the snow on the peaks will disappear; most are guessing August. For now, there are still cornices taller than me. I wonder how much trash is up on the peaks, all the hand warmers and lost gloves and protein bar wrappers.

The trash down here is showing me that it’s the end. See? It says - this season is over. The time to move on is now. If you can’t, there’s something wrong with you. Did you think that bad bits would just disappear? That if you covered them in quiet loveliness for a few months they would stay hidden?

Renewal doesn’t just stick to the good parts. Like so many others, I’ve been in a pitch battle with old habits as the light has grown longer and the sun has burned brighter. My mind and I are at war in a way we haven’t been in a few years. I thought I was done with these, I say as I look out onto the trash. But it turns out I only managed to snow them in for a little while. They were waiting for a period of warming to show their faces. To trick me into thinking that the sun on my shoulders would be enough to distract me from where unmelted snow hides shadows.

I’m here to prove to you how alone and how uncomfortably full it’s possible to be. I’ll fill a trash bag with the wrappers and the water bottles and bits and bobs of plastic. I’ll say thank you to that celestial radiation but also hope that there’s another good winter coming.

But I have to understand that winter won’t last forever. As much as I love the season and I do, it will cover the undesirable parts for awhile but those bits of me that I want to throw away will still be laying by the side of the road. I’ll just have to know that the season is just that – a temporary arrangement of clouds that will soon change, no matter how much I may wish it otherwise.  

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