i promise to be beautiful
Hello! It’s Tuesday and we’re back here again. I’m having the best time writing these letters to you. Well, this week’s letter isn’t from me actually (wink wonk). Anyway, I wrote this as someone who absolutely hates winter and is trying to find the beauty in it to get me through to British Summer Time. This time of year for me is cosy for about five minutes and then gets real depressing real quick. I’ve been falling asleep at around 8 pm since the clocks went back pretty much. It’s just not a time where I thrive. But maybe writing pretty essays will bring me a little joy during this time. And maybe for you too! That and maybe one of those lamps for people with Seasonal Affective Disorder :)
Enjoy today’s letter. I’ll see you next week.
I saw frost on the roofs of houses and the tops of lampposts yesterday morning. It was not yet winter but it was almost a foreword to the book she would soon write:
I promise to be beautiful.
I know it will be cold and sometimes it will feel like I am swimming in between the hollows of your bones and just under your skin, racing the blood cells in your your arms to see who can get to the heart first, but I promise, you will warm up again.
When you get home after spending time with bare trees and watching your friends’ warm breath evaporate in the air, the bricks that surround you underneath my heavy winter sky will work overtime to make sure I can’t find you in the living room or the kitchen or under the sheets.
And once you are settled and the feeling in your fingertips comes back to the surface, I want you to look outside. I painted a picture for you. Sometimes it may be too foggy to see but look, look how the lamppost lights up behind the thick of evergreen trees, it looks like a spooky story has come to life.
And look how the frost settles on the bushes outside your neighbour's house, it’s like it has been dusted with icing sugar, ready to sit on your top lip after a great big bite.
And see how the moon looks like a ball of ice way up in the sky, so high you have to crane your neck, so lonely in the clear, vast, winter blue sky, still up after her night shift. Don’t worry, she is okay. But she does appreciate a gaze every now and then, especially in the mornings. A reminder you have not forgotten her.
I know the days are shorter, and the sun may seem to get tired quicker now, but she is not dying nor is she afraid, but like you, she needs rest. She can’t shine terrifying and radiant all year round (at least not everywhere) and neither should you. Please use this time to rest. Use this time only to look at the pretty Christmas lights in your city and go back home to the warmth. Run through the light snow to your best friend’s house and let little drops of me fall onto her carpet. Admire me from the windows with candles lit and kettles boiling. And make sure to smile big and bright when I show you my first snowfall. I usually time it just right so you wake up to another painting from me, and I always love to see you smile.
I promise to be beautiful. I promise to be as beautiful as the Christmas decorations in your homes, to be as beautiful as your sleeping lovers with the blankets you’ve placed on them during my early night falls, to be as beautiful as your bookshelves illuminated with fairy lights and plants that hang from the top shelves, to be as beautiful as the art that hangs on your walls.
The cold does settle but not for long. In the meantime, I hope you’ll have something to admire.
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