By: Carrie Liang
a breath of frost and frozen promises, stitched together
like great-grandmother’s quilt: disparate squares of longing,
each corner tucked with the residue of what we’ve shed.
here, at the perihelion, Earth leans closest to its star,
this cosmic intimacy that belies the bitter cold,
and we, too, draw near to something incandescent.
the ember-glow of transformation is warm beneath my ribs.
the wolf moon ascends, pale judge of fresh beginnings,
its light a braille across the snow, teaching us to read
the script of return: how ice remembers each impression,
we resew ourselves anew with our long fingers,
threading yarn through the eye of transformation,
one stitch at a time in the grey hall of morning,
where coffee steams like small hopes ascending.
this is the time of slow thaw, of gradual metamorphosis
not the savage burst of spring, but the soft architecture
of change: the drops that gather at the eaves, the soft drift
of snowdrift to water, to movement, to loveliness.
but we practice resurrection in minor keys, these
soft shoots we sowed beneath December’s burdensome weight.
beyond the portal we go, once more & once more & once more,
carrying these small acts of rebellion: the terrier all-dressed
in his woolen waistcoat, foolish & whole; the arm of the blood donor
rolled back in quiet heroism; the gallery-goer seeking
warmth
in oil and canvas, discovering it in the white space between walls.
and what of the Horse galloping towards us across the lunar calendar,
all vigor and frenzy? what of Martin’s vision,
still coursing across the weave of our conscience?
what of Holocaust’s shadow, the treaties inscribed in ash and hope,
the piecing together of a world that breaks, and breaks, and breaks again?
we carry these, too, in our patchwork. the thick masses
that tether us to history, to cutting duty, to the muffled ache
of remembering when it would be easier to forget.
but January teaches us the balance of juxtaposition:
how to set Tolkien’s Shire side-by-side with Auschwitz’s gates,
how to celebrate the introvert’s secret kingdoms
and the screenwriter’s open imagination,
how to study verse in the bare-limbed wiry stand of winter trees
their branches curling like paths toward ultimate epiphany.
this is the month that holds multitudes, threshold season
where we learn to inhabit the
liminal, the in-between.
so let us tend our soups and oatmeal, these humble rituals
of nourishment we hold dear. let us note the icicle’s slow arithmetic,
the way light filters through them into prismatic loveliness.
let us write our resolutions not as bargains but as love letters
to the human we might have been, knowing there will be some
left undone, and that is a kind of grace. let us coiffure our pets
and take them out into the cold, savoring the illogic
because joy is also an act of rebellion against the cold out there beyond the glass.
and when the buzz is more than we can stand, this white noise of waiting,
this vast emptiness of loneliness rolling in like fog,
let us remember: we are making something of ourselves here.
a patchwork. or maybe a beginning. its name is not important.
each square a hope, a reaching, and a stumble towards light.
January requires only that we keep stitching, breathing,
moving in the sweet boredom of
change,
hoping that there is heat somewhere beneath this frozen skin,
waiting, for who is not waiting?
for the final moment of thaw.