justwrite 27 january

Apple trees hide in the winter. There are no apples, no fruits, no blossoms, no leaves—there are only frames, bony skeletons practicing the art of survival. While the wind blows and the snow twists around once-tender limbs, the trees give up their names, turning into muted witnesses, saving their sorrows, their fears, tucking them away and waiting for the release into color, into bloom, into spring. So, too, the hand of the woman standing on the morning bus, no-fuss rushing from home to work and out and about, skin cracking with cold, with reality—she is patient, gripping the seat back around tight turns, she is earning interest, paying out later, when the air melts again into color.