Snow Angel

The burden of the season

by Julia Kadel on Unsplash

I used to take pictures of shadows on the wall
cast by clear glass jars filled with wilting flowers —
picked weeks before on a day that I tried
after a warm stretch reached through the shiver of winter —
as the first signs of the sun soaked in through
the windows looking out onto the faded
brown nowhere, the color of late February
when everything’s given up and dried out, is
cracking and choking…