Winter

Maybe moods are a substitute for weather. Since I've moved to California, it seems like I have reached the highest high and the lowest lows. I don't remember ever ping-ponging so fiercely before. This is the weather inside my head. And it has been snowing a lot. Blizzard.

The past couple of weeks I have felt the flakes of snow falling in my head, with that chill and the soft deadness it brings with it. I feel numb, but not numb. Dead, but not dead. It is an inevitable darkness that comes when the whole world is one color and there is no sun. It is all gray. It is sunny outside, so my mind makes a winter behind my eyes, so I won't forget what it feels like to be cold. Or to be left in the cold.

So many years of snow have passed, and this is the first that seems to stretch on forever. Warmer temperatures will not thaw this one. It is ongoing and unstoppable. It chills me from the inside out.