The Air Changed Yesterday

March first. I was on my way back from the corner, I'd gone out for nothing urgent, just to move, the way you do after a February that sat on you, and somewhere between the mailboxes and the end of the block the air changed. Not warm, exactly. More like it stopped being only cold. There's a particular smell to it: wet concrete, something faintly green that can't possibly be there yet, the memory of last year's mud. I stood there for an embarrassing amount of time.

Then I looked down and there were crocuses. Three of them, pale purple, right at the base of the brick wall where the snow had been three days ago. I don't know why crocuses always catch me off guard. They're there every year. They do not surprise me in any rational sense. And yet every March I crouch on the sidewalk like I've discovered something no one has reported yet.

Found these. March first.

The sketchbook is on the kitchen table still. The winter session post went up a couple weeks ago and I've been letting things settle, the way you do after you close something that's been open a long time. The windowsill is the windowsill. Gerald has new growth coming in. The collapsed bowl is on the shelf above the stove where I moved it and it's been there long enough now that I stop seeing it. That's the test, I think: when you stop noticing, it belongs.

March, actually.

I don't have a plan for March. I don't need one yet. The air changed and there were crocuses and I stood on the sidewalk until I was ready to go back inside. That's the whole entry. Sometimes that's enough to write down.