The sharp cold. The snap of the wooden decking beneath your feet as you go out for one last look at the moon. The deep stillness of the trees, all root energy, all listening, all underground.
The heat of your own inner furnace turning icy white at the tips of your hair, the curling edge of your dark scarf, the fringe of your hood.
This is the burrowing into oneself that every small animal knows. This is not the weather for Resolutions, for bootstrap pulling or the determination of Achievement.
This is another doggedness entirely: the hold we each have on life, to keep living it, despite the cold, despite our smallness, despite the end that inevitably comes.
Here is the darkened den. Here is the beam of sunlight, hot on our paws, our wan faces. Here is the rush of blood to the skin and the knowing, by contrast, exactly what we want and that we are still very much Alive.
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