Adaptation

Twenty is feeling warm again. Fahrenheit, that is. Twenty notches on the Celsius scale is always warm.

Minus twenty is a great reality check. It sort of re-calibrates your senses. It lets you know how vulnerable you are without the proper shell.

The brightness of the winter sun also shatters any phoniness. As I stare at the MacBook screen before me, the strong sunlight through the south window bounces back the image of my slightly silhouetted head. This reflection, which is superimposed on my laptop, reveals the imperfections of my right side, the crevices and lines and day-old stubble.

And so I adjust to the warmer air, the maturity showing through my face, and the quiet in the room, which allows me to hear the subtle tic tic tic from the clock on the wall.