The Ceiling in February

I knew before I looked at the ceiling.

Not a sound—the room was still.

But the light already had that feeling,

the flat gray-white that comes to fill

February. Not dark. Not bright.

Like paint applied with no opinion, no hand.

The kind of gray that won't commit to light

or dark, that won't resolve, won't land

on anything. I lay there and I knew

the whole month had arrived again: the one

that doesn't even try. The residue

of a sky that's simply done

deciding.

I got up anyway. It followed me.