Writing Prompt for February 2026
Hiver (Le Loup dans la neige)- Félix Bracquemond French 1864
curtesy The MET digital archive
by Richard Berwind, Managing and Poetry Editor
One of my favorite movies of all time is Osgood Perkins’s supernatural possession film, The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015). On my initial watch of this movie back in 2023, I thought the overall movie was very good, but in the coming days, weeks, months, the darkness and the sorrow of the movie crept into my consciousness and I could not stop thinking about it. The movie takes place at an isolated, all-girl’s Catholic boarding school in upstate New York during the early 00’s during mid-winter break. The story follows two young girls (Kat and Rose) who are left behind at the school: the death of her parents in a fatal car accident for Kat and the inability to confront her parents in the midst of a pregnancy scare for Rose. We also follow a mysterious third girl (Joan) as she traverses her way through the night and the cold to get to the boarding school for a reason that will only become apparent in the third act. The backdrop of the movie: a desolate wasteland of snow and below freezing temperatures with early nights and later mornings. At its core, the movie tells the story of a girl who makes a Faustian bargain with the Devil spurred by loneliness, isolation, and the failures of men.
On the coldest night of every February, I find myself turning off all my lights and putting on this quiet, dark movie as a sort of ritual, to steel myself against the lingering loneliness that comes with late winter nights. It’s no surprise, really, that I conduct this ritual in February as that was the original title of the movie: February. The director was told to change it for marketability-sake, but the simple name of the month, the feelings it evokes, is such a profound, overwhelming experience of the senses, almost primordial in nature. It’s visceral, the depiction of snow, the mention of the month. February, at least to me, is the hardest month of winter, somehow the longest of its cohort while being days shorter. It exists without the bright, superficiality of December, the soft hangover of January with its gentle snows. It’s bitter, sad, lonely, a reminder that nicer days will come, but the drifts pile higher and the wind, somehow frostier, pricks at the last bit of reason you have left and you start to think maybe, somehow, it will last forever this time.
In recent years, perhaps due to this film, winter portrayed in movies makes me shiver from the inside out. While not a particularly good movie, I sat in my seat chittering while watching The Black Phone 2 (2025) in theaters back in October having a psycho-somatic reaction to the raging storm and ice portrayed in the movie. Similarly in Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (2018), I can’t help but relate the feelings of isolation and loneliness of the winter setting to the political allegory at the center of the film. During the winter storm of this year, I watched The Phantom of the Opera (2004) to experience Christine Daae singing of her sorrow in the soft, fresh fallen snow of a graveyard. Some of our oldest stories involve the changing of the seasons, the sorrow of the snow and what the Spring gives us back. Persephone’s descent into the Underworld, Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen, and the Snow Woman of Japanese folklore are some of the stories that immediately come to mind. These stories embody grief and loneliness, and yet, they also explore the intrinsic beauty and wonder that comes with such desolation.
For this month’s writing prompt, we challenge you to confront the cold, reconcile with it, open your metaphorical windows and allow the snow drifts to build in your stories. How does the cold sink itself into your bones? How does the ice reflect an interior truth? What feelings does the word “February” evoke in you?
