Dear winter, we have less than two hours left together. Why do you have to go? And don't try telling me you'll be back, because you won't. It won't be you I face in a year's time, but a stranger, like you in so many ways but in others completely alien.

I'll miss you. We had some good times, yeah? Everyone's heralding spring, but I have to say I'm torn - it's so easy to lie in your arms and succumb to the cold, to become one with the ice, to let the light fade out of the landscape and to forget the world exists. Spring was always too fast, too eager, too energetic for me - I was never fast enough to catch on to its madcap schemes, and it left me lying bruised and hurt in its wake.

Life is like a library, I think - an endless march past the dusty shelves that catalogue our existence. Look behind you and they stretch off to infinity, look ahead and you see nothing. Always a step into the unknown, always a blank page as yet unwritten, and so often we can't see why we're writing at all. Who's gonna read it? Not us, that's for sure. Usually, all we want to do is shut the book, shove it into the shelf and move on. And given the biased, temporary, easily destructible nature of memory, there's no guarantee that our words will remain - except for the times when we long for their disappearance. Then they stay, horribly permanent. ButI don't want to shut the book on you, and I don't want the gifts that you gave me to become part of the past. Will they?

I can see why immortality is considered a curse. How big can my library become before I lose myself in its labyrinth? Dear winter, if I can't even cope with saying goodbye to you, how will I survive everything life has to throw at me? But I have to move on, have to feel the warmth, have to leave you behind. For if my heart stays frozen, spring's careless touch will shatter it.