How to recover from frost

-Ruby Browning

Do not hide from the cold, let it into your bones, I like to imagine the zero-degree wind holding my hands, running careful palms over my arms, crawling into my lungs saying, “oh, how I’ve missed you; tell me everything!”

Look for the grass roots and peeking leaves, do not be alarmed by the ice-warped

ground, you have boots and the sleet that’s already fallen can’t get inside them now

Smell rich spices and lilac bushes and sprinkle salt on the tip of your tongue, let the flavor burst between your teeth, revel in drops of maple syrup and flakes of Maldon and decide you might like onions after all

Watch your dog sleep on the worn out blanket you used as a baby, see how the sun glints off her powdered sugar fur, remind yourself she is breathing and precious and small and so are you

Turn your face to the sun, buy a banana soda at the grocery store simply because you’ve never seen a banana soda before. Cover your hands in the childish gleam of a big purple glue stick. Put ice in your drinks and taste the cold as you build a fire in the grate, let dichotomy fill you like rainwater puddles on playground slides.

And while you wait for the cherry blossoms, dream of the sun-drenched marigolds grown in your old backyard and the ivy growing on the bench. Cut your hair by yourself, no one is going to stop you. Clean the kitchen table and play board games with your mother. Put your hatred for cooking down just long enough to help your dad make dinner. Look up apartments for three in Boston, New York, Wyoming, Vermont, Ottawa, the world is waiting to hold a love like you do.

Hold onto the warmest things, my dear. A summer is coming that is day achingly bright and you are no stranger to freezing, I know how cavernous cold makes a home in your bones, but open all the blinds, watch light move during the day, reread everything you wrote last spring, everything about the world growing green and about green eyes and the person you love more than wind.