False Spring?

The cold won’t quit.

April spits warmth, then slips
back into bone-gnawing wind—
sinks its teeth in again,
all bite, no bloom.

We talked about a garden—
just talked—
named nothing, planted less.
We only circled the edges of it,
a maybe in the mouth,
a soft someday shared between
laundry folds and passing glances,
the dare to hope.

This cold, though—
this cling, this sting
that won’t lift—
makes the dream ache different.
What if we try
and time cuts in?
What if we don’t
and the wanting never stills?

I know what loss does—
how it threads silence through
a childhood.
How absence can echo
longer than presence.
Is it fair to risk becoming
a question they never stop asking?

Even the bulbs
beneath this frostbit earth
are fools for the sun.
They don’t wait for certainty.
No, they split, they risk,
they bloom bruised and early.

Maybe it’s not about fair—
Maybe it’s about fierce.
Maybe dreaming is
the thing we get to keep
when nothing else is sure.

The cold doesn’t decide.
I can still want,
still wonder,
still whisper names
we haven’t chosen yet
into the not-yet air.

Even if we don’t plant,
even if it never takes—
there’s beauty in the reach.
In the hands that hold
the maybe.