False Spring

I resent the snow blowing past my window, I'd been enjoying pretending it was spring. I forget that here, spring doesn't really happen. Instead, the temperature bounces between winter and summer until one day its not winter anymore. Its about this time that I look for cherry blossom trees and tiny purple flowers after the rain.

Its amazing how my body still itches for it, knows deep-down somewhere that at home, the seasons are starting to turn. That along the streets in my old neighborhood, those pink flowers are coming out, and for one perfect week all the trees in the city bloom. I would walk to school, jumping up at intervals along the way to touch the branches and be caught in a flurry of petals. Waiting for rides, we would climb up and steal the flowers, tossing them behind our ears. Nothing will ever speak to me of spring like the cherry blossom trees.

They don't last very long, I think if they did we wouldn't notice them.

Before the trees on my street were cut down when I was about fourteen, and replaced with smaller maple trees, I remember waking up on a chance morning each February, to look outside and see the street suddenly full of pink.

But here, on a cold February morning in Montreal, the flurries are snow, and there are no flowers in the streets. And here, I have obligations and responsibilities, which I have been ignoring for far too long. In Montreal, spring is usually false.