By Lakshmi Khumanthem
Something about March gets me in my feels,
like a shadow stretching, a pause before a storm.
It's always around this time of the year
that I feel a certain sense of melancholy—
a feeling of an unnamed sadness.
The sense of something shifting, changing, but not quite.
A lingering sadness, the wonder of life's fragility.
Maybe it's the month when Holi arrives,
with festive spirit and colors, but dull and colorless for me.
Maybe it's the weight of nostalgia and grief,
memories coupled with fear and apprehension.
Maybe it's because this is the month when
my sister departed from the world.
I was just a child, barely an adult then—too young and naïve,
too soon to understand the loss,
to understand that life doesn’t wait for you to catch up.
March was a time of uncertainty,
when every memory felt vivid, yet blurred.
For many, March is a season of renewal,
festivals, and the promise of spring.
But for me and my family,
it is the gloomiest month of all.