Winter is a bad time to think about the cold.

There is nothing forgiving about my mood.

Anger, when the sadness leaves, emptiness, when the anger leaves.

Inspiration comes in short bursts and it’s gone before I can give it a moment’s pause.

The cold cuts through my patched and safety pinned jacket, the rain smears my makeup and I am aware of a low, buzzing fear that my backpack will leak and ruin the shitty, sticker covered MacBook that is my sole source of company.

There is nothing forgiving about today. The grey is everywhere. It sits as a mute backdrop to the tyranny of the casino construction site and the grind of trucks and the downcast, damp people ducking past my camera every time I pause to take a snap.

Winter is a bad time to think about the cold.

The cold manifests in the peaks and valleys and every foreboding thought, and each desperate impulse.

When you think about the cold in the winter, you open the door just a crack, just enough for the ice to settle on your soul and freeze you from the inside out.

In the warm weather, the thought of the cold is a comfort. It’s solace from the sweat and the thick air. In the winter, the thought of the cold is a poison that spreads and destroys your armour, your protection, your safety.

I want to find a pub, somewhere warm with a fireplace perhaps, where there’s good food and a glass of wine, and enough voices to drown out my own.

I want to sit there with just myself and my notebook and write whatever comes to mind, and hope that each word reinforces my own defences.

Against the ice. Against the frost.

Winter is a bad time to think about the cold.

It can take your soul.

xox Joany 🍕