Past Winters, Past People, Past Times — A Resolution for Winter (2025)
The people who seemed fine in the crowd all turned away, trembling on the verge of tears. The friend I’d only just come to know was leaving soon. The one who once exchanged distant glances turned out to be someone else up close. I couldn’t tell what the pigeon walking toward me was thinking. The family I longed to see wasn’t quite as I remembered them.
Winter had long been my favorite season. Though I struggled through all four seasons, winter’s hardship somehow washed over me with its cold. Or perhaps it was the feeling that everyone froze equally, not just me. The winter skies where I lived were especially clear and bright. The weather was bitterly cold, but the winter sky felt higher than the summer one. Each day, the sun set yellow and round, burning in a cloudless sky.
As the seasons change, people keep on living, though some wither away. For them, withering becomes another form of life. Those who have been close to death hold that thought close, and, ironically, they continue to live. They move one small step at a time, breaking each motion into many, yet they persist.
My understanding of others is like the holes scattered across my body. The deeper those holes go, the wider the space for people to fill them. Those who pass through, like wind through those holes, remind me of the breezes that once brushed my hands, and I find myself caring for them even more deeply. I’m drawn to such people, and to the thin yet profound traces of life that these encounters leave behind.
Some days, it feels like nothing sticks in my head. Early in the morning, I dive out of the house and plunge into the street, walking aimlessly through the crowd. On days like that, I take in everything I see, one thing after another, in the order you encounter it. By day’s end, what I’ve gathered feels like a basket heavy with laundry. I drag it around for a while, only to toss it all into a pit at once when the time comes. The brown shadow beneath my eyes that day and the room I returned to.
The words written before winter arrives are both a vow toward another winter and a desperate plea for it to leave me be and pass me by. Like the habit of wearing twice as many clothes before catching a cold alone, they are a quiet act of self-protection. It is the time when yellow streetlights hum, and breath becomes visible against the black night sky. Fingers, ears, and the tip of the nose freeze red. The sun hides quickly, calling the night too soon. People’s footsteps grow faster, and unexpected embraces feel warmer.
©JEONGAN CHOI 2025