There is a certain romance to the Month of March  despite its many gloomy days, when the sun does come out, like today, it’s glorious and warm and golden and carries with it a different kind of optimism than the other winter months.

There’s something about March that feels like holding your breath. Winter hasn’t fully released its grip – the mornings are still foggy and crisp, the light still slants low – and yet. And yet. Something is shifting.

March moves through the streets in a slow, luminous thread. Sunlight lingers longer on the backs of coats, on the quiet swell of skin beneath careful touch.

February is often described as a bridge between winter and spring. Today is cold, cloudy, and drizzly, but it’s brighter than it’s been in months, and the days are unmistakably growing longer.

January has a way of slowing everything down; the light slips across walls, disappears early, leaving rooms and hours to fold inward. It wraps itself around us, those short days fading to long evenings, the world outside reduced to silhouettes and candlelight.

Began assembling this edition in the days before Christmas, but life intervened – as it does – with travel and gatherings, with champagne bubbles rising in crystal and candles burning low into the night. Now it’s Boxing Day, and the introduction I’d written has slipped out of time, no longer quite fitting the moment we’re in.