The Long Winter

December: The snow wraps around the bars of the courtyard gate like hands grasping at your ankles.

January: In the orange midnight dawn, the streetlights are glowing discs floating in the fog.

February: Bobcats and dumptrucks spirit the snow away in the dead of night, turn the city into an Arctic wasteland.

March: New flour coats the black glaciers; the banks of the mall, battered into crystals by rain shrapnel, look like coral reefs covered in dirt or sand, piled over brick walls and benches like a tumor of barnacles.

April: Pink tree petals fill the sidewalk cracks like streams of blood.