February –
I never much cared for you, not in my youth. Of this you are surely aware, for it is not often that young people are wont to appreciate nuance when given the opportunity to gorge themselves on sweets and make bleed pink construction paper hearts with lines of red glitter glue – a confession of love as vulnerable as if they had procured their own beating souls and offered them to that person for whom they wait to see each morning in the schoolroom.
I delivered my first St. Valentine’s Day heart to a boy named Trace, if you will remember, along with a declaration of my most pure love. He, unfortunately, was enamoured with my blonde-haired playmate whose name made four lovely syllables instead of my stunted two, and moved away shortly thereafter. I still grow embarrassed when I think about that day.
February, for this I blame you. You draw that which lies within our chests away from your frigid weather with promises of glowing fires and jewel-coloured lips, of rose petals and milky furs, and then you leave us, deserted, to navigate a world equally and simultaneously fiery and frosty. You serve us the elixir brewed over eleven months, ripe upon the eve of your annual reign, in the moments in which we wander with the least clarity. It is then that you wake from your restless slumber, shooting Cupid with his own bow and crossing stars where there ought to be constellations. You swoop through our lives more quickly than the others of your kind, you relish in breaking patterns, taking and adding time as easily as if it were of your inexhaustible currency – yet another transaction paid for in emotion.
Who but you is capable of blowing our exhaustion away and coaxing from us a light of energy? Who but you could so divinely altar our courses until we are unable to escape your design? You, February, you are nothing but passion, nothing but a burning battalion of emotion, you lead us off the beaten path and into the rose bush – and then you leave before we discover if there are any brambles.
I confessed my love to that boy all those years ago because of your whisperings in my ear, and I remember it still because you are loath to bear the suffering of another. You are not like the others of your blood – you do not exist to serve, but to be served. October makes light of one’s worst nightmares, July soaks the world in sunshine until there are no shadows – but you, February, you release us into a forest of our own emotions and leave the compass at the end of the maze. We are the wood, February, and you the fire that burns us to ash.
Oh, but my tart attacks pierce you not at all. You of course are well aware of your own perfection. I see you personified – purple velvet cocktail dress with white ostrich feathers erupting from hemlines as if begging to tickle the skin of another, eyes stolen from the memory of a young Bridget Bardot, black dot drawing up the corner of your lips. How you love to watch the chaos unfold around you as you sit, sipping bubbles you do not need, keeping your snow-colored gloves clean of the havoc you wreak.
I know this is no conventional letter of love, but I also know it is exactly the correspondence you most crave. You who are bored by the orthodox and ablaze with narcissism, a detailed list of your beauty would be as unimaginative as an April shower.
I do not resent you, February, nor do I fear what you bring. I am disillusioned by your antics, but they never cease to captivate me. I am wary of your tricks, but I rely on them nonetheless. You have set the rules of the game so there is but one champion, and I continue to play as a willing contestant in a tournament I am fated to lose. If that is not love, my darling, I wonder what is.
Love,
Lettie Anne