February passes me by

peek into my journal pt: 3

It is March now. The sun leans a little too close, stretching its golden fingers through the afternoon haze, and summer has settled into the fabric of the air, thick and humming. I am sitting on the floor, cross-legged on my chatai (mat), feeling the woven texture press into my skin. An iced coffee sits beside me, sweating into the coaster, the ice cubes clinking gently each time I lift it for a sip. Lunch was indulgent, heavy with spices that still linger at the back of my throat, and I feel that delicious kind of laziness that follows a good meal, the kind that makes you want to melt into the afternoon. But February still tugs at me, pressing against my ribs, whispering to be remembered. A book—Butter by Asako Yuzuki—rests beside me, spine cracked open just slightly as if urging me to slip back into its world, but before that, this. If you are here, if you are reading, I hope you have something warm or cool to drink, something that sits comfortably in your hands as we sit together and talk about a month that came and went like a dream both fleeting and endless. Also if you like you can put on this song I would recommend as you go through the letter, enjoy!

February always carries a kind of weight, not in the way of burden, but in the way of expectation, of longing. It is the month that holds the tail end of winter, the season’s last breath before warmth begins to seep in through the cracks. Mornings were still wrapped in cold, but by afternoon, sunlight dripped like honey through the blinds, slow and golden. It was the kind of month that stretched and shrank all at once, slipping through my fingers even as some days felt like they would never end. The paradox of time, of living within it. I spent my mornings in quiet rituals—rolling out my yoga mat while the world outside was still rubbing the sleep from its eyes, breathing deeply into stretches that felt like opening doors inside my body, followed by meditation where silence pressed itself against my skin. And then, fruit juice, freshly made in place of my usual morning coffee. A change I had resisted at first but have now come to love, the sweetness of oranges, the tartness of pomegranates, the smoothness of blended bananas filling my mornings with something gentler, something nourishing.

The rest of the days unfolded like scenes in a film, each moment slipping into the next without clear edges. Cafés became the backdrop of many afternoons, the scent of roasted beans curling around conversations with my best friend. We would sit across from each other, sometimes laughing, sometimes lapsing into comfortable silence, the city moving around us but never quite touching the quiet cocoon we built within those café walls. There is something cinematic about coffee shop windows, the way people walk past them, unknowing of the little stories unfolding inside. February held its own kind of cinematography—steam curling from cups, sunlight glinting off spoons, the low hum of a city in motion, the rhythmic clatter of cups being set down, picked up, refilled.

Evenings were different. Evenings were video calls, pixels carrying his voice across distance, across the distance as cricket matches played in the background, filling silences with the sound of commentators and crowd roars, but it was never about the game itself. It was about the space it created, the ease of simply being together even when we weren’t in the same room. Love in its simplest form, stitched between shared laughter, between a sigh at a missed catch, between the small everyday moments that make distance feel smaller, less cruel.

And in between it all, I read. Three books this month, adding to my year’s goal of fifty-five. Seven down, forty-eight to go, each one lingering in my mind like footprints in the snow, each one changing the way February felt in its own way. “We Do Not Part” by Han Kang—an ethereal meditation on memory and loss, each page like a whispered secret, delicate and heavy all at once. Kang’s words always have a way of slipping under my skin, but this one felt different, like trying to catch smoke in my hands, like standing in a room full of ghosts and trying to remember which ones were real. “The Vegetarian” by Han Kang—dark, unsettling, almost feverish in its intensity. A story of quiet rebellion, of a woman who rejects the world’s expectations of her body in the most absolute way possible. It felt like falling through layers of a dream, each one more terrifying, more beautiful than the last. There are books that whisper, and then there are books that sink their teeth into you, refusing to let go. This was the latter. “All the Lovers in the Night” by Mieko Kawakami—loneliness articulated in soft, sharp edges. A woman drifting through her own life, watching the world through glass, never quite able to reach out and touch it. Kawakami has a way of making silence hum with meaning, of making absence feel tangible. It was a book that felt like a quiet ache, like standing in an empty room and hearing your own breath echo back at you.

February, in all its strange elasticity, was made up of these moments. The days played out like a series of snapshots—golden light pooling on the floor in the late afternoons, the sound of footsteps on pavement after rain, the hush of pages turning in the dark. It was a month of small joys, of longings that pressed against my skin, of quiet routines and the kind of solitude that doesn’t feel lonely but instead feels like sinking into something warm, something known. And yet, it still passed by too quickly, slipping through the cracks even as some days dragged their feet. The illusion of time, the way it expands and contracts without permission. I wonder if February will always feel like this, like an inhale held too long, like a moment stretched to its breaking point before dissolving all at once.

Now, in March, I look back at it with a kind of bewildered tenderness, as if trying to hold onto something already half-forgotten. It was a month of transition, of yearning, of love found in quiet places. A month of café conversations, of video calls, of books that left fingerprints on my thoughts. A month of laughter that rose and fell like waves, of hands reaching for warmth in the lingering chill, of words left unsaid but felt in the spaces between. I think of the sun slipping below the horizon, casting the sky in soft pinks and oranges, and wonder how many Februar-ies will pass before I learn to hold onto them a little tighter.

And you—where did February take you? What did it leave behind? I hope, whatever it was, you held onto the moments that mattered. Let them sit with you a little longer before the next month swallows them whole. Hold them in your palms like fragile things, let them warm you like sunlight pressing against a windowpane. The days we cherish do not disappear; they only settle deeper into us, waiting to be recalled in quiet moments, in the way light falls on a familiar street, in the scent of an old book, in the first sip of coffee on a slow morning.

Time moves forward, relentlessly, and so must we. But maybe, just maybe, we don’t have to let go of everything. Some Februar-ies stay with us, folded into the fabric of who we are. Some afternoons still hum in our bones long after they’ve passed. And maybe, as we step into March, we carry those remnants with us—not as burdens, but as reminders of what it means to live, to love, to yearn, to be here, fully, in all the fleeting beauty of it.

For now, let’s sip our drinks, let’s turn the page, let’s move forward. But let’s do it gently. Let’s do it knowing that nothing truly leaves us.

Love,
Mukta<3

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