It's All Relative

The flowers will come!

Cold, driving rain slashed at my face, a sign that March weather was having it’s way with Victoria. The hospital parking lot, filled with drenched cars waiting for employees, was slowly emptied. Umbrellas, turned inside out, useless. Icy rain - or was that snow - or maybe sleet - made the air as gray as the sky and the asphalt lot. Streetlights coloured ever deepening puddles and water sluicing down the gutters. Brown skeleton trees, no longer a natural protection, were shaken by the wind adding their rainy drops to an already wet sidewalk. My raincoat, shiny black. My blue leather purse, soaked from light blue to navy blue. My jeans, turned from dry khaki darkened to wet khaki. The only balance in this day was the dry warmth inside to ease the wet cold of the outside. My only bit of gratitude? It was not a blizzard. (But it has been biting cold.)

“Cold is cold.”

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Author's note: Edited February 05, 2024