April, Come She Will

By Ryan Schwartz

April came, and it was the first. We all thought we would be saved by April. By 10 degrees and the will to live to see another flower bloom without the knowledge that another snowfall might still come. April was everything and April could be nothing if we chose. We didn’t know how to not be hopeful. Our buds burst and broke through the final intolerable layer of muddened soil to find the rejuvenation we had so desperately been looking for. For years it seemed, if only a year could be mere months. We were happy and stupid and in love with ourselves and had no idea what we were going to do tomorrow, if it rained, or if winter tried to come back, and stay this time. By the time summer came it would be humid and we’d come home smelling like rain. The damp trees would perfume the outside air like our childhood coee tables, if you were willing to get close enough. Spring would come and save us all. It was April and everyone was ready. We’d wake up one morning and it would be May before it was June and we would silently mourn every day we had ever spent hoping for spring. Now it was here and summer was around the corner and life had never been anything other than what it was in this moment, when spring came.