operation: fly north

Spring keeps knocking on my door.

"Listen, Spring," I tell it, "I have nothing against you. You have a lot of things going for you. But I just don't love you...like that. Please stop coming."

But it doesn't listen.

It's already gotten inside the minds of the community. Boys playing basketball in their driveways. Girls riding their bikes down the street. Mothers yelling out their doors for their children to find their shoes and come inside for dinner.

They have no resistance!

And I don't know how much longer I can hold out.

Kroger is selling lilies and hyacinths and lilacs and, I would still be okay, but then I saw them.

The daffodils.

Spring is so sneaky! Blast its yellow-petaled tactics, like drops of sweet, syruppy sunlight, smiling, laughing, bobbing their heads under a bright blue sky...so happy....

There's only one option for me: I have to flee.

I tell people it's because I can't find a job (which I can't), or because I'm hoping to go to grad school this fall anyway (which I am), but the real reason I am packing up all of my things and moving back to Wisconsin is because, well,

Winter is still there.

Winter and I have had a very long love affair that goes through months of turmoil every year. People often shake their fists at the wintry sky and ask, "Why must you snow?" But, you see, Winter and I, we understand one another. I understand why it must snow. And, in the same way, it understands why I want it to snow. But we can't explain it to you. You wouldn't understand.

I wonder if it knows how much I'm struggling right now.

And I have to hurry, because now tulips are beginning to grow right outside my front door.

Spring.

Curse you and your cheerfulness.