January.

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Although the days are longer again,

these months of the year are mostly dark and without color.

The Christmas lights are put away for another year. (Well, almost.)

Festivities have traded places with daily rut.

Getting up, taking kids to school, going to work, doing groceries, 

cooking, doing household chores, going to bed and getting up again.

The energy that came naturally in the sunnier months of the year, 

 has to be cranked up now.

I much rather read a book or crash on the couch with warm slippers on,

than to go for a bike ride or get active in the gym.

On the colder days I haste myself inside at the slightest possibility 

and close the door behind me in relief.

I have always been a daughter of the sun.

And when that sun is absent I don't need to be outside.

I prefer to bury myself in my own little world.

In my own little kingdom between the walls of this house 

where it's warm and cozy.

And I wait.

Just like the world around me, I hold my breath,

sometimes patiently, sometimes not patient at all.

It does have something, 

that silence, that emptiness, that duskiness, 

that expectance.

And when those spring flowers 

start to raise their little heads through the black dirt,

I will find them even more beautiful.