And even though I’d lived more than 30 winters, I always seemed to forget how much I loved the evening light stretching on and on already in May; the buds on the tips of branches, so solitary, yet so innumerable; and that first bite of a fresh strawberry that bursts through your chest like a childhood memory.
I have never liked spring per se. The sudden sun is merciless on all the dust and dried skin. Melting snow leaves in its wake rifts of gravel, candy papers and shit, and my throat is sore all the time. But I like the feeling of life moving forward. It’s like the end of April always pries my chilled fingers off everything I’ve held onto for too long and pushes me back-first into the green miracle of summer. “See?” it says with the kind of coldness only beautiful women can master, “”There was life here all along. You tend to forget.”
It was in April I’d once read for my university entrance exams. In April my lover of ten years left me for his new acquaintance. In April I defended my doctoral dissertation and booked one-way tickets to the other side of the world. April, for me, always ends in an emptiness that is at once vast and miraculous and terrifying like the sea or the sky. And there is nothing I can say to refuse it.
