Since December, Essie’s brother Cal has been calling her shifting moods “she-asons,” dragging out the she. He means this as another insult, a way to needle her for weather sensitivity. But she leans into it, tips it sideways as only she can. Shivering down the wooden stairs on face-meltingly icy February mornings with a full grin becomes an act of war. She treats even the white coated wheat squares in her cereal bowl like rafts of sweetness, signs of winter’s sustenance. When two of the rectangular pieces stick together like waterlogged pages in a book, like soggy Ten Commandments tablets, like milky conjoined twins, she gobbles them up.
April eventually melts everything into thick mud and birdsong. Bud-lined branches slap the kitchen window. One morning, Essie greets Cal near the toaster dressed in a rough wool sweater the colour of asphalt (screw pastels!). Smoke starts to ribbon up from his slices, and he yells and stomps, a teenager in the dumb clutches of a tantrum. She stays as cool as the first frost, as silent as the iceberg roses in the yard spotted with pink fungal rot. All days are hers, now – me-asons. She’ll tease him about his outburst later. Plan her words while slurping steaming cider. Tell him to stop being so goddamn temperament-Cal.
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