“Thaw” by Anna Edinger-Revette

Winter does not leave all at once.
It lingers—
in the stiff corners of morning,
in the brittle hush of branches
still remembering the weight of snow.
The ground exhales slowly,
like someone learning again how to trust breath.
Beneath it, something green
has been practicing patience for months,
whispering upward through dark.
There is a soft undoing happening—
ice loosening its grip
on the quiet bones of the earth,
water relearning the language of movement,
dripping, slipping, becoming.
Even the light changes its mind.
It stays longer now,
stretching gold fingers across windowsills,
touching what winter kept hidden—
dust, cracks, the small, stubborn signs of life.
And we, too, begin again.
We shed the heavy names we wore in cold months,
the silence we wrapped around ourselves
like a second skin.
We open—hesitant, maybe—
like the first crocus splitting frost.
There is still chill in the air, yes.
Still nights that bite.
But something inside us
has already turned toward warmth,
has already decided
to believe in return.
Spring is not just arrival—
it is permission.
Permission to soften,
to begin imperfectly,
to trust that what once felt buried
was only waiting.
And somewhere,
beneath the thawing ground of everything,
something in you
is rising.