Surviving the shortest month should be a piece of cake.
The light begins to filter back in February,
and family falls away to a comfortable farness.
Snowdrops remind us of colour to come,
and the nights are nearly negotiable now.

Mid-February brings chocolate hearts, flowers
and artificial expressions of love,
disappointing and hollow (to be sure)
but reminders of the humanity we pretend to crave.
Connections can be ours, if we really try.

I don’t know how you managed to pull me through
January’s dark, but I’m grateful to see the smile
arriving earlier every day in morning light.
And you don’t have to hold on so long or so tight.
The terror of night is briefer, more tractable now.