The Cold Is Just Standing There

There is a specific kind of February morning where the light comes in grey and flat and the window fogs at the bottom and you stand there with your coffee for too long just looking at it. Not because anything is wrong. Just because going outside means deciding to go outside, and that requires a kind of commitment I do not always have at eight in the morning.

I checked the temperature on the radio weather, twenty-nine degrees, feels like twenty-three. I put on my wool socks. I made a second cup of coffee. I thought about my running route and then thought about it again and then looked at the pothos on the sill, which is apparently unbothered by any of this, and felt briefly envious of a plant. It's been on that windowsill since October and I keep meaning to move it to a spot with better light and I never do and it keeps being fine anyway. I think about that sometimes.

the pothos is officially the only thing thriving in February

I did go outside eventually. I want to be clear about that. I bundled up, I went, I ran my route, I came back red-faced and glad I'd done it, the way it always goes. But the part I keep thinking about is the standing at the window first, that particular February suspension where you're warm and the world outside is not and you're just negotiating. It's not dread exactly. It's more like the pause before a sentence you know you're going to finish.

sitting with it. literally.

Anyway. The pothos is fine. I'm fine. February is doing its thing.