The hawk has taken back the air above new grass.

Let us lift our own spirits with shaky, wary fingers, as marionettes of our own heart's prosperity.Let's smile through the desire to grimace and shiver, Elongate our bodies on dark, soft sheets, stretch and yawn and hem and hawAnd turn the heat up too high, so that we may feel the end of winter as it blinks and nods in the distance.Let's allow ourselves happiness.
---

Friday Etymology: Aftermath -1520s, originally a second crop of grass grown after the first had been harvested.

You see, aftermath is easier,

opening again the wound along its numb scar;

it is the sentence spoken the second time — truer, perhaps,

with the blunt edge of a practiced tongue.

-C.E.