Ready for spring

Winter presses close around her, but her gaze is already somewhere warmer, the fur‑lined hood cupping her small face like a frame around a painting while her freckles seem almost restless, tiny constellations waiting for a different sky; snowflakes cling to her lashes and each breath drifts out in a pale cloud that looks like a wish escaping, and though the cold nips at her cheeks she stands unflinching, watching the world with the quiet ache of someone who remembers color—the hum of green beneath her feet, the give of thawed earth, the sunlight that once warmed her shoulders—and in her bright, stubborn eyes, spring is already beginning, quietly, like a secret she refuses to let winter keep.