Winter's Chin

It's snowing tonight is what they say. It's supposed to be significant, a significant snowfall, a sudden drop in temperature. People are going around talking about it, saying they need groceries but they don't have time, and oh they wish they didn't have someplace to be tomorrow. As if the snow never came before, as if it's never going to come again. As if it isn't some fact. Well, I don't have anyplace to be tomorrow, and I have food in my cupboards, so maybe some of you are even a bit envious of me.

What it is is the back and forth, this constancy of  vocalizations, approval and disapproval. They love this city, they love its people and its buildings, they love the water, they love the leaves, they love this city so goddamn much. Until any part of it turns against them. Until there are waves and wind, until the traffic and the potholes. Until that door opens and they sneak a peak at Old Man Winter's chin, and then all bets are off. Then in come the complaints, riding the back of every last flurry. And suddenly they can't stand this place no more, they're so cold, they can feel it in their bones, their eyelids are frozen shut, everything's ruined, how could anybody stay here how how how.

I don't want to be inside. I don't want it to be that I'm cooped up in this house, nowhere to go because I have nowhere to be, wrapped in a blanket and day-old sweat. Eating bowl after bowl of Cream of Wheat, slinging back microwaved coffee. Yes, I'm fine with the weather, I have nowhere to be. Yes, it's cold outside, but look at me here. Yes, inside this bed you could almost swear I was comfortable.

Certainties are the one things we should let slide, but we never do it. We hold them up and stick them in each others' faces. It's that time of year again, the time where we chastise the cold and wonder why we're here at all. Lucky people, a lot of you have choices. You're here because, well, I assume, chastisements aside, you want to be. Old Man Winter, he'll do as he pleases. I, for one, am envious of that.