DST

They say it's good for something, but you can't remember what. All you know is that you woke with an extra hour's sleep in your system, like a bribe, and that by afternoon it was dark outside and the evening stretched out too long around you. She writes from above the Arctic Circle and asks, is today the last time we see daylight?, her pleas alone enough to make you vow to never visit. There was a time when I did not know my whole self to die for several months each year, and I wonder now what that was like. To not slowly wither at the first slow dusk, to not feel fear with each cold gust of wind around the corner.

And yet, somehow,  it is only life. I've made it through too many winters to think I will not survive this one, too. Living a life does not mean evading the dark entirely. It means walking in it, and always remembering to walk yourself out.