I woke this morning to find winter had written all night. Each window wore a different script, feathers on the bedroom glass, ferns climbing the kitchen pane, fractals spreading across the bathroom mirror like frost's own alphabet.
Some mornings, winter writes in cursive. Ice crystals flowing into each other, forming words we can almost read. Other mornings, the message is stark: straight lines, geometric, definitive. And sometimes (like today) the writing is all flourish, all ornamentation, baroque frosting that serves no purpose except beauty.
I stood at the window with my coffee, steam rising to blur the frost's message. What if this isn't accident? What if frost is winter trying to communicate something we've forgotten how to read? Some language older than words, written in the crystalline grammar of cold meeting glass.
By noon, the sun will erase it all. Winter's correspondence melting into water, running down the glass, leaving no trace. Tomorrow, a new message. Tomorrow, winter will write again.
What have you read in the margins of cold mornings?