Dear January,

I feel like this is the type of thing where people usually say thank you. But I’m honestly not quite sure you deserve that.

I appreciate you coming to visit, but I’m not sad to see you go.

You began not with a bang, but with a blah. I relished the few days of your beginning, your first steps into this new year. I was able to spend those days curled up in bed with you, wasting away the sun, and shivering in the cold nights with the phone pressed to my face, buried in the dark under the stars and the comforter.

At first, we enjoyed with mashed potatoes and warm home-cooked meals together. We shared time on the couch, cuddled up with a cat at our feet, and hot omelets and fresh vegetables.

With Netflix on the TV, you were born with peace and The Walking Dead.

There was a group chat, everyday messages, nightly phone calls. There was bickering and a fight. There was a crash, and forgiveness forgotten, and comfort granted – all strung out over distances that spanned father than my arms could reach, but not even close to the reach of my heart.

Those middle days, when I began to miss my best friends most, you got to see those days - where a screen was the only connection to my favorite smiles and wild laughs.

Did those days make you sad too? Because you didn’t get to meet them all?

Then there was a trip, my backpack stuffed to bursting with excitement, to Chicago. January, we walked the city in heels and boots and vans. You and I shared pictures and museums and great food. You got to meet my best friend, finally, and see us together during late nights, when we outshone the stars. The time when we laugh like wolves to the moon, and mutter, and shove, and smack each other with shaving cream to get even – that’s my favorite time of day.

You got to see me clutch the car door handles and experience him driving like a maniac through the city. January, don’t you see why he’s my favorite? That’s my brother, January, you can hear that when I screech at him can’t you? And when I don’t say anything at all.

There’s a lot to hear in that shared silence.

And you stayed with me on the plane, after he hugged me goodbye and I waited for takeoff. You kept me company through the last few days at home, before heading back to school.

And when we arrived, January, it felt so different from December. The campus was empty, ready to be colored in with honesty and video game nights and insomnia deliveries.

Those were the promises you made us, January.

But I think I’m a little disappointed in you. You threw us back to quickly, to the rush and pull of the college pace. I wasn’t ready to let Chicago die. I thought I’d have a few more nights.

But my birthday was spent in classes and job training, not with the people I wanted to see most. You granted me two hours with my roommate before the day was spent completely. Never had anyone made me feel so loved, so considered.

For my birthday, she wrote me a book. She poured us into the ink, sliding in jokes that only we would get, and somehow, she managed to pull off the most meta moment in media since inception.

In the week since then, time has been filled with work and school. Everyone’s readjusting, trying new clubs, new food, new schedules. In that week you ground us into the floor, cheeks pressed under feet and fists, exhausted and stressed, snapping at each other like half-wolves. We are all so weary.

Time has blurred and dragged, January, where did you go?

With all that you left us with, January, I’ll have to turn to February and beg her not to let my people, my favorite beating hearts, slip away.