Green reminds me

Take a moment to roam with me. Let me guide you through these streets, this maze of thoughts, these alleys and avenues that start here and end over there. Somewhere over there. This will be an adventure, a grandiose and magnificent journey that you and I will share. The skies will be unexpected lilac, the clouds will part at the command of your fingers. Rivers will flow upstream, waterfalls will be covered in glitter-like vapour. You will never get drenched or lost in the mist. The canyons will shrink, lakes will grow, rains will gather and fall only around us. We will stay dry and use the power of thought to leap across deserts and oceans. I might show you how to travel without ever taking a step forward. There are thousands we need to visit, there are nooks and crannies we need to discover, there are hearts awaking and some leaving. We must depart, we must depart now.

This here is spring. You might not know, might not have ever seen or felt. Spring is balmy and warm. Spring is cool and unpredictable. Spring is vicious in her ferocity to drive winter out. Always. Spring used to be equal to the other seasons, they used to have equal time and measure, equal power and beauty. Each had time to prepare and plan, to move slowly then briskly, to administer change the most magnificent way. Spring is still amazing, indescribably unique. Spring has lost its precious time to winter, has lost its time to summer. Wedged between the two sturdiest adversaries, spring has diminished in power, dwarfed in significance. Spring seldom shines any more, a rare sight. This is how you should imagine the wistful, undeterred beauty: spring is elusive, a floating coat of scented petals. Spring is prolonged and pensive, a continual state of anticipation. Slow rising and dormant, moving to awaken one bit at a time. Spring is a masterful swordsman, duelling winter into submission, winning a fair fight, then losing an honest battle. Spring is every shoot, every tender startling. It is sunshine wrapped in the gentle adoration of humble trees breaking out in fragrant petals. Spring is the heart’s only time to plead for then receive forgiveness.  

Green reminds me of how we used to be. Every picture in my mind, every moment that faded, every bitterness escaped, every tarnished memory of how we gulped the sights of the waking nature in spoonfuls. Then it all slipped, the green into a million colours and you into the misty horizon; somewhere on a shaky raft, floating through the velvety, unkind ocean. I knew of the certainty that the green would return, that spring would pay a visit once again. In turn I knew I had lost you forever, that no changing warm current would every drift you back to my shores. The sadness of the coming seasons, the scorching heat of summer, the instant freeze of autumn, the slow rising giant that winter is took my pain, slowly rounded the sharp edges and made my heart content with the wait. The beauty that would beseech me to keep waiting, to keep wanting, to keep searching and yearning, longing for the green. Without hurting now, I confess that green still reminds me of how we used to be.  

You must see now that someone, somewhere, cheated you out of spring. This spring has been kidnapped by a winter that refused to leave, by a summer that could no longer muster the patience to enter when it was supposed to, at the given word, at the exact time. Still you must journey, cut through the sudden and blinding lights of the sun. Stay clear of the breeze it throws our way, stay clear of the unknown marshes, the forests that are littered with the slumbering ghosts of winter. You must romance spring even if it is only here for mere hours. Show it you care, show how you have been preparing for the unthinkable waltz with the river, the trees, the shrubs, the tulips that are rapidly shooting out from the nothing that the freezing winter has turned them into. Break free from the cage, capture the essence and open your heart to the warmth. Fill the streets with your light steps, make way for the breeze that carries the perfumed scents, the messages of hope. This is your spring, the treasure of your soul, the journey that you must never forget. This is when you awake, when you must plead for then receive forgiveness.