Green Returning, Softly

This morning, the air didn’t bite.
It brushed—
a cool hand instead of teeth—
and I stood there longer than I needed to,
keys idle in my palm,
breathing like someone who had almost forgotten how.

There is a moment, every year,
when winter loosens its grip
not all at once, not dramatically,
but like a woman unfastening a button
she’s grown tired of pretending not to notice.

You can feel it in the soil first—
that damp, mineral scent rising,
dark and honest,
as if the earth itself is exhaling secrets
it kept buried under frost.

The light has changed too.
It lingers now,
stretching across the kitchen floor
where we stood barefoot,
you laughing at nothing in particular,
your shoulder catching gold
like something worth framing.

Outside, the trees are thinking about it—
not yet leaves, not yet green,
but a quiet swelling at the tips of branches,
a promise held just beneath the surface,
the way desire sometimes waits in the body
before it knows its own name.

I walked past the same houses,
the same cracked sidewalks,
but everything felt newly possible—
like the world had softened its edges
just enough for hope to take root again.

And I realized—
it isn’t just the season that returns.

It’s the way we open windows
without thinking.

The way we reach for each other
without the weight of long nights pressing in.

The way joy slips back into the room
unannounced,
carrying the scent of rain and something blooming,
something wild and tender and alive.

Spring doesn’t ask permission.
It simply arrives—
and reminds me, gently, insistently,
that I am still here,
still capable of warmth,
still capable of beginning again.

© Susie Stiles-Wolf