prairie winters and a sky full of sun.

We chased the sunset, you and I. It started in spools of pink thread, slowly unraveling near the tops of the buildings. Pink string, blue twine, yellow yarn, all slowly coming to pieces and settling on the white prairie lands. Knit me a sweater with the colors of the sky and I will never be lonely. I swore I wouldn't fall in love with a place with only mismatched trees for miles, but the way this small city lets in sky is enough for me. Groceries in hand and the smell of Starbucks thick on the thin coats we wore, if only to protest the absurdity of cold this late in the month, we settled into the groove of the back roads we once called the road to ballet but now only known as used-to-be.

Sometimes, I miss the woods where I grew up, trees thick as stars in the backyard. The sky was crowded with bare black branches come March and we walked through the trees. Yet, I have a box of memories under my bed and these prairie winters are taking residence in it, finding their place among movie tickets and cards and trinkets from places I've lived.

Moments like driving through acres of countryside covered in hoar frost in the morning. We always seem to have a paper cup of coffee in the car. When we watched the roads long and winding, it felt like it could be more than a place between house and home. Or the years of driving daily to ballet, back and forth from our stoop to the studio on the backroads. I watched the world turn, round and round from the yearning days of summer to the long stretches of winter and back again, and I claimed these forgotten fields as my own. Or even taking the thin road through the country, dipping in and out and dangerously close to frozen lakes.

And I am slow to say it, but these prairie winters are finding a place in my heart. They are different than the dusty blowing folds of snow we found piled in backyards rich with our own forests. Different than the one winter in California with palm trees instead of pine. Different than the winters spent next door to my grandparents, wearing a trail from their door to ours. But do you know, in the whirls of new snow or the acres of untouched land or the way the sun hangs heavy across the sky that I think, yes?

Yes, I was born for wide open skies and these wild prairie lands are not so quiet as they seem.
Yes, there is a difference between loving and needing and it's in these snatches of land and swatches of sky that I see it.
Yes, I complain about the cold and blow hard on my chapped fingers, but I cannot help being proud that this place is my own.
Yes, a place halfway back can be home.

Yes, I cannot wait to see these fields and roads awaken to spring again.