Feels Like Winter Today

I don’t want to go out there, where the wind blows my dress and there’s frost on the roofs. I can see it from these windows. The low roofs of the temporary classrooms all ablaze with that white stuff. Not quite snow, but not quite settled rain either. The sky is gray, so gray it seems like we skipped autumn completely. If I go out there my nose and cheeks will turn red and I’m wearing bronzer today. The two will mix like oil and water, showing everyone the mask I paste on every morning.

I want to stay here, drinking my earl gray tea wearing my scarlet pashmina, feeling too hipster for my own good, and looking out at the grey sky, thinking this must be what London’s like. There’s this song in my ears that makes me want to sing out loud, or run to the nearest piano. I know where there are some, they aren’t far. It would be too easy to disappear into one of those tiny rooms, just big enough for you and the piano, maybe a second lover if you want. But today it would be just me and that wooden box of soul. We could talk to each other for a while, the piano pounding notes on my heart, and me filling the walls with words that sound like winter.

But instead I’ll trudge along these sidewalks to a completely uninspiring class about power and wealth and the way we’ve twisted the world into a dollar sign. Then I’ll trudge home, alone and songless, until my shuffle finds a song that pleases my heart and the dark haze of an early winter seems magical and inspiring again.