These small hours

 Dear future hubster, 

sometimes a few fake spring days pops up right after the coldest night of the year, the winds are suddenly not icy sharp, the birds are shouting before it's even sunrise, and this girl pulls out the sorter skirts and the spring fragrance. 

And as she walks through the usual street and feels that the cold hard crust around her heart might be softening a little bit, and considers picking up pastries for the office, she thinks about a song she hadn't listened to in years. One that she'd liked very much at the time, one that she remembers having meant a lot for somebody else, and at the time she didn't understand how it made that somebody else so emotional. 

So naturally she puts the song onto the playlist, mood already altered by the mild temperatures, the self-inflicted olfactory trigger, and the fact that it's a Friday, and... there it comes. All of them feelings hit her out of nowhere, resulting in nostalgic crying three times over. There is something in the melody, or the words, the alignment of the stars, heartaches that have been pushed down, worries and laughter, some magic combination that makes her feel the New York air (humid and garbage-y), hear the hum of traffic, she can even see the scaffolding on some random stretch of 2nd Avenue, the lights are soft, the movements of masses are wavy and secretly organised, and the whole thing just squishes her heart a little. A lot. 

And maybe other people have been listening to the same song, or mybe they also feel that the cold hard crust around their hearts might be softening a little bit, or they too experienced olfactory triggers (ie somebody around them smells nice), or maybe she's just projecting it all, but there seems to be a tiny shift in how the world is that day. It almost feels like... hope? Not just the relief that comes when the winds are not icy sharp, that we might have survived this winter, but the tiniest glimpse of faith that maybe, just maybe, we might have a chance at the next one too.