What Spring Does

Spring doesn't arrive. It trespasses— one crocus first, then another, each a small, purple crime against the jurisdiction of winter. The tree outside my window has been pretending to be dead for five months. Today it showed its hand: one bud, impossibly green, like a word someone has been meaning to say since November. The birds are back. They act as if they own the place— which, to be fair, they left before the rent was due and have returned expecting their rooms exactly as they were. I opened the window for the first time since October. The air came in like a guest who's been knocking for weeks—politely first, then less so. Something in me responds. I don't name it— naming it might scare it off, the way naming happiness sometimes does. I'll call it Tuesday. I'll call it open window. I'll call it the crocus that broke the law and got away with it.