Threshold

Winter's grip loosens, fingers uncurling from oak branches— the world still gray, but breathing differently now.

A single crocus pushes through frost-hard earth, purple audacity against the calculated chill, while somewhere, a bird remembers its own name.

The air tastes like possibility pretending it hasn't always been here, waiting beneath ice, beneath the long forgetting.

We stand between seasons, holding our breath, as if stillness itself is a kind of prayer— as if waiting could change what's already written.