The following piece was awarded Second Prize in the OU Students Association Welcome Week Writing Competition for Welcome Week 2024 (28 Sept – 6 Oct). The author is Rebekah, who is studying an Open Degree.
January is here again, it pitches its voice over the ghosts of last year. January walks a winter path. A cold sun reflection, like a solid door, it doesn’t cleanse. Wisps of ice bring blue Monday. I am anxious for summer but I am here blanketed by bitter days where troubles are few. January is a moment and a year. Wicked naked beauty of wild, raging, beloved cold. I think that’s reason enough to begin again.
February is slow to start, barely regaining consciousness; rested, caught up, human. The month of despair, a skewered heart. Sometimes I look like February, ripening into love to become whole and complete. Cold sliding away.
March, I wonder if winter is gaining courage to bloom into spring. The Earth has remembered its name. Small blades of grass twinkle through the cracking plates of snow. The sun dazzles again once more but the wind still blows cold. March is the seam between winter and summer, I open the window and in wades spring to kiss me on the nose.
April it’s pouring and the trees are getting greener. The sun is warm with summer in the light and the wind is cold with winter in the shade. People whisper and sigh. There’s dazzling mud and dingy frost. I want to leave it all, which isn’t fair. I take my morning tea with the birds.
May the blackbird sings. All things seem possible in May. The month rolls over and yawns like a cat in the sun below the window. May is full of lost days. I want to keep running from the world. I want August. There’s a note from April that no one carries the light like I do.
June I’m young until September. There’s warm fingers. June died last year but it rises from the dead again now. White daisies, and white dresses, and white tennis courts and childhood once more. June nights invented romance. I am tired of being brave, someone is kind just in time. I lose June.
July is June again. The whole year has been a July inside July. It is absent of sensations. I have hope in who I am becoming. The wind brings the scent of rain, where I was a child and knew nothing of pain. Exhausted I am tired of masquerading, I had arrived happy, but wherever I am summer reminds me. I lose July too.
August, muggy August. Half a year is already gone, I wanted to make something of myself. Instead, I look in mirrors and wish I was back in May. August is barefoot and sun-dazed, a bite into a ripe peach. Air thick but eager, a border between summer and autumn. Full of panic, I have a compulsion to snatch away at life and hurry to start living. August is odd and uneven.
September is a lighter transparent month. It arrives like an exit for August’s bad luck. The Sunday of summer, but there are only four Sundays in September. I have done nothing all summer but wait to be myself. Summer dissolves in my mouth and I can’t remember what it tasted like. In the last days of September when things are getting sad, there’s a prophetic breath of autumn and I wonder how many seasons I have left to love.
October is reality and delusion. Recently orphaned summer daydreams, tuck themselves into sweatshirts and old notebooks. Anything unexpected might be possible in October. The days decrease as autumn grows. More leaves are dying, everywhere I look things are dying. People are like October, it sits tight in the throat. Soft kisses and white dew in the grass. I couldn’t live without October, it would be terrible to jump straight from September to November.
November the birds have parted. There’s sad sea hymns and wild songs in the pines. My thoughts can’t move an inch without thinking of November, it’s grey grieving. November is a secret that lasts one fairy minute, time flows strange. The weak sun lets night grow. It gets dark. I can get quiet. Confined to home.
December’s frost is on the windowpane. The plants and Earth are resting, maybe I should too. December’s wintery breath brings snow and feasts. I can feel the bone structure of the landscape, something waits beneath. It is nearer to spring than it was in September. There’s a last bird song in the dark, it covers what can no longer lay bare. Longer days will come again soon.
January is reborn. I’ve learnt that new beginnings don’t always require new calendars. Let’s go again.
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