I've always liked to humanize the months of the year, and February has always seemed to me to be like a woman. She is a lonely month, so far from spring and fall. She had stretched herself too thin that year, like a prisoner on a rack, and was taking forever to move on. I was eased by this, for I too was unable to move forward towards spring. Caught up in this endless winter, there grew a space behind my ribs where a heart should be. For my love had taken my only heart, and left "the rest of me."