The buds are creeping down the branches, the sky is aggressively blue. The birds are chirping; there is that one in the backyard that hoots and squeals like nails on a chalkboard.
Spring is finally falling into place. Senses are a puzzle, here: the sounds of life light up while the trees are sad and bare; the smell of the city so sensual that we can feel it, even as the cold eats away. The juxtapositions are so pronounced it’s like spring synesthesia: we have been so starved for so long that we taste the blue sky, we rub our cheeks against the poignancy of the lake.
I love the simplicity of winter and the decay of autumn but spring is so complicated. Summer is obscenity, all vibrancy and life, and winter is all silence, and autumn is this celebration of death in red and gold and yellow. In spring the city is gentle and pretty: every block has corners that were cloaked in ice a month ago, and will be lurid and rotting not long from now.
Leaves and flowers are choking, they are cutting their collective umbilical cord. The gardens are suddenly growing and the flowers are blooming and it is fucking beautiful. In my backyard the tree is still skeletal but it is drawing life, under the bright blue sky and the hesitant blossoms.