amidthestars:

They turned the heat on in my building this morning. Something felt different when I woke up. Warmer would be the obvious thing, but also kinder, closer, like the walls had moved a few inches in, near enough to put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. It was pouring rain. By mid-morning, the rain had become snow. It didn’t last long, but you could almost feel the city sighing in chorus. Not me, though. I had those close walls waiting for me on the other side of the flurries, the kindness that had moved in overnight. 

 

In the evening, I put my laptop on the kitchen counter. I watched a livestream of four of my favourite poets performing in New York while I made an apple crisp, stopping with my knife halfway through the apple to listen harder to the best lines. The apartment was still warm. Now it smelled like cinnamon. Often I had to grip the ledge of the counter and breathe, deeply, as if I could inhale enough of this mixture of comfort and gratitude to make it a part of me. 

 

From time to time I catch my reflection in the laptop screen and it surprises me each time. I don’t quite recognize it - this person could be a sister, if I had one, or an uncanny lookalike. But I’m interested in what I see. I want to ask her questions. She looks like someone I might like to know. 

 

Then the apple crisp is finished but the poems are not, and so I take my computer to the living room and sit on the couch. I think that I will crochet, but soon I’ve put the yarn down and pulled a pillow into my lap, wrapping my arms around it like it is the entire, sweet, quiet evening, the gentleness I’ve never met before and do not want to let go.