Coming Home for Summer

Autumn began as usual - with attempts to hide mistakes under leaves. Winter was greeted with the same stubbornness with which people wait for snow to cover their tracks. The air smells of fatigue, but a good kind of fatigue - the kind that comes after a struggle, not after running away. Everything freezes, as if the world has decided to hibernate so as not to hear its own thoughts. Somewhere on the horizon, warmth flickers - not from a fire, but from a return. To a place where you can breathe easily again, where everyone gradually returns, some from the hustle and bustle, some from pain, some from their former selves. And when it finally gets really cold, it means home is close.