Extra! Extra! Valentine's Day Extra!

Friendloveds,

I wanted to share a new piece I wrote. I want to share it because, as I composed, I had the following in mind: us, how February feels to me/us, and most importantly how to make peace with this month, which reliably serves up such challenge and heartache.

This is a prose sestina. It has a repeating pattern of endwords to the sentences. If you'd like to check out a traditional, "perfect"sestina in verse, read this: Sestina by Elizabeth Bishopl

Wishing you all a Valentine's day brimful of love. And tenderness.

Ok, here's mine:

February Sestina 

Today the world is voided and gelid. The word of today is “escape.” Today desire’s contours feel labyrinthine. It is that interminable month again, February. The month when the heart feels tender. The month when lips and hands crack and the world takes bets on when you’ll abandon it all to become an ascetic.

Perhaps it would not be so bad, the life of an ascetic. But how would it work when the air is so gelid? Can aesthetics be tender? They abstain, they abscond, but don’t try for escape. They know there’s no swerving February. They know there is only one way through and it’s labyrinthine.  

Constantly turning corners on new emotion feels labyrinthine. This barren month demands the same garments each day, as if it were made for ascetics. This is the crucible of February. The bigger, meaner, sister of Cold is waiting outside and her name is Gelid. The heat you’ve stored in your body is always trying escape. You must fight to remain warm in this hard-freezing clime; it’s about staying tender.

What does it mean to stay tender? Perhaps it means exploring the landscape within, a labyrinth. Perhaps the long walk back to oneself is the only escape. Write letters to old friends, stroke the fur of the cat, press skin against skin, and leave mortification of the flesh for the ascetics. Inside can be warm even when outside is gelid. The greatest teacher of loss can be February.

The time to grow comes in February. The moment to molt and emerge tender. Stripped naked you understand better what’s meant by the word gelid. This month’s methods are labyrinthine. The solution lies—where else?— at the heart, though the way there is not strictly ascetic. Once you find it, you won’t wish for escape.

You don’t need an escape. Make friends with February. It too doesn’t want to be an ascetic. Like yours, the heart of February is tender. Finding it takes 28 days of wandering its labyrinth. You can’t comprehend the embrace of the heat nearly so well if it never gets gelid.

We cannot escape the divine call to stay tender. This is the glory of February, month most labyrinthine. Even ascetics know this, when world has turned gelid.