Sixty degrees in mid-February. Then fifty. The lake stretches out flat and indifferent, still thirty-five degrees no matter what the air does. Beach grass stands dormant — it's seen this before, these false promises of warmth.
Ridges of ice remain where waves pushed them onto shore. They're melting, but slowly, unconvinced. The sand has that particular shade it only gets in late winter, somewhere between frozen and thawed, committed to neither.
The light is the first thing that changes. Around four-thirty it holds longer than it did two weeks ago. A different angle through the afternoon window, falling on the floor in a place it hasn't fallen since October.
Spring is still weeks away. The grass knows it. The ice knows it. But the light keeps stretching, a few minutes at a time, and the room it falls into is a little warmer than it was the day before.
