We used to think suicide rates were highest around the winter holidays but now we know that T. S. Eliot was right, April is the cruelest month. Why? Because it “breeds lilacs from the dead land,” which is to say that everything wakes up and if you are not in the mood for that, it can be pretty off-putting. The winter was dark for everyone, now everybody but you is out there in the sun shaking their booties. Depressing. So I say we use that information to boost our moods now! How cozy are these darkest hours. How intimate our separate longings. How dormant all that nonsense and humidity. Winter! We, of all people, are present, if accounted for (if for which unaccounted). How absurd. In the twenty-first century, no less! At least, let us together mourn the weather. At best, let us let failing and winning take its rest. Got a little poetic there. Ex oh ex.