January Blues

January has caught up to me, burying me in an avalanche of monochrome sky. It fills my eyesearsnosemouthlungs with cold and dark; I choke on it, gasping for warm breath.

It smothers each tree, each branch and twig. Every twisted strand of lichen, each spruce needle, each dried out stalk of grass that has managed to keep its head up: weighted heavy with snow.

Each day is flat, grey, sunless. The trees offer a suggestion of green that is more black than anything, their trunks a pale brown. That is the only relief in this drear month.

I long for colour and light. Gaudy-plumed tropical birds calling raucously from trees in every shade of green, trees sporting blooms of red, purple, yellow, orange. I long for skies that scream blue, and puffy white clouds  and an ocean that glitters in the ever-deepening gradient of the Caribbean. 

I hunger for fresh fruit, juicy and ripe bursting between my teeth, flooding my mouth with stored up sunlight instead of this tiresome weight of snow and ice and dark 

dark 

dark.

I forgot what January was like. I seem to forget each year until it hits me like this.

3 weeks until Nicaragua: an orgy of light and colour and fresh fruit and oh my. Swimming and bare shoulders and bare feet. At least I've got this to move toward!