February is the month that bites down—
wind with a switchblade edge,
sky like the underbelly of something dead,
clawing at a season that turns its back,
half-winter, half-wishbone,
stuck in the throat of the year.
Sidewalks crack like dry lips,
trees wear loneliness like a second skin—
bare, brittle, bracing for something
that never arrives.
The sky stays gray like an unanswered text.
Days sink like forgotten receipts in my tote bag.
It asks me things I don’t know how to answer,
whispers, Didn’t you think you’d feel different by now?
Didn’t I?
The cold is a debt I keep paying in shivers,
in chapped hands, in mornings that taste like soured perfume
and dreams of other cities, where I wake up panting,
where I breathe out his name like an epiphany
and let my eyes sigh closed like a prayer.
I walk through the days like a half-lit hallway,
never sure what I’m looking for,
never sure if I’ll find it.
I forget what my hands were made for.
I press my palm against the frost on the window
just to prove I’m still warm-blooded.
February unspools, soft and slow,
a ribbon of time that never quite ties into a bow,
a breath held too long in a room too small.
And I—
I stand at the edge of the month like a skipped stone,
almost ready to sink, almost ready to fly,
caught in the soft ache of almost,
in the half-light of wanting.
March will come like an answer
to a question I don’t remember,
but tonight, February lingers,
a ghost-limbed thing,
a name I still run toward in the dark,
leaving me unfinished,
half-written,
half-here.
