February leans in close, icy breath tingling the nape of your neck, and asks you to pick a door.

“A what?” you blurt, turning toward the raspy voice. No one. But that’s when you see it. A door straight out of a fantasy novel.

Approaching slowly, you take in the intricate details and lifelike carvings: apple blossoms and honeybees; pregnant doe and spring ephemerals; fiddleheads and fox kits.

Wood as frozen as the earth below, your fingers ache as they trace the grooves and ridges, then fumble across a secret panel. Beneath it? A round peep window with an unobstructed view to spring.

Bone-cold and weary, you press your face against the cold glass and glimpse a drift of wild violets, trees gleaming with sunlit leaves, a bouquet of ruby-throated hummingbirds.

“Yes, please,” you nearly sing, reaching for the frigid brass knob. Your heart sinks when you find that it’s locked.

Rapping the knocker for what feels like ages, desire becomes agony.

You wait, desperate for the door to open — desperate to bypass the bitter cold and step into the warm embrace of spring.

That’s when you remember the voice.

Pick a door.

Of course, there’s another. You spin on your heel and set out to find it.

As you walk, you notice how the frost resembles glittering stardust; the moon, a silver smile in the crystalline sky. How naked trees stand in praise and wonder of what pulses, unseen.

This is the doorway, you realize, feeling your breath deepen, your heart open, your jaw and belly soften.

There is peace here, at this threshold of endings and beginnings, where life moves slowly, where early crocuses burst through the wintry soil. Peace and wonder. But only if you choose it.