A Winter Truth

Winter. White. Lack.

I’ve made you believe that I hate winter,

But that isn’t always true.

(Truth, like the seasons, has its place.)

Winter, undisturbed, is beautiful

As only something observed at a distance can be.

Winter is not approachable, nor friendly.

Oh, but the cold!

I embrace the cold because it reminds me that I am alive

Teaches me to appreciate warmth

And reminds me, eternally, of you.

Winter. White. Lack.

I lost you in the winter.

So, eternally your little lost girl,

I’ve made myself believe that I hate winter.

Truth in its place.

This, my ode to you, is getting old.

I hate writing to you, about you.

But mostly I hate how I loved you.

It feels false now, that love,

In a way that makes me question:

I must have loved, in order to hate.

Strong emotions you have always evoked.

But what if this false love rings true?

Perhaps when you marry her,

The bells will ring and I’ll know

If my love was true.

Love is a tree, frozen in time,

With dew drop icicles and memories

Only you would understand.

So I shared them with you.

I mistook understanding for caring,

And now love is a tree,

Frozen in time.

You always liked to keep the window open in the winter.

I remember that.

I never understood why.

We could not be more opposite, you and I.

I dislike winter, and you loved the look of it.

Perhaps you loved the idea of winter

As you once loved the idea of me.

How can a firefly princess thrive in the cold?

She can’t. So you lost me.

I entertain thoughts of you

Far too often.

I want to purge you out from me,

But I’m afraid what’s left

Won’t be worth the living.

What happened to our world of make-believe?

Growing up doesn’t have to mean growing apart

But I’ve seen no proof of it.

You haunt me still,

Until this sorrow-weight

Lingers on my tongue.

It has become impossible to talk to you.

If you meant less to me

Perhaps we could have more.

But it wouldn’t be worth the living.

You are halfway around the world

And I still spin around your axis.

This heartbreak isn’t fair.

It’s unforgiving,

As bitter as the coffee I brewed this morning

To ward off the chill of winter.

Winter seeps into the floors of this home,

Creeps into the soles of my feet

And I remember walking barefoot in the snow.

I’d give up warmth and embrace the cold

If I could just stop spinning out of control.

My writing always seems to be tied to you

And I hate that I can’t disassociate the two.

Winter days last too long, even when they’re short.

I wish, well, for a lot of things,

But I refuse to entertain regrets.

If wishes were dreams

Perhaps I could pen them down

Make them be.

But wishes are futile and secret,

Like my love of you.

When I was a child we played fort in the backyard

And sailed a ship of logs as far as our imaginations would take us.

I was still, in part, that child when we met.

I have so many memories.

Memories of being child-like, of you.

Memories only Alzheimer’s could cure.

You missed so much, being an only child.

I remember, in a way that I can’t actually have remembered,

You as a child, making mud pies in red earth

And scratching at mosquito bites that in truth

Represented your insatiable curiosity

And dissatisfaction with the world.

So true that I couldn’t possibly have made it up.

We talked, whether you remember it or not,

Of having known each other before we ever met.

An idea I wouldn’t have come up with on my own,

But couldn’t deny either.

As a child, with a child’s vulnerabilities,

I came to you.

But I was only a mosquito bite,

Fleeting in a world too small for you.

Are we there yet?

To that place of understanding

Where only lovers meet?

Your cat eyes stare out at me

From sheets of red wine.

You were mine once.

We met for the first time in the fall

And fell into each other in the winter.

Depression overtook me the next fall

And, yes, I succumbed.

That winter we hardly spoke at all.

Then I got engaged to a man, a boy,

That I thought I loved.

I kissed you goodbye and you didn’t stop me from leaving you.

That winter, with a rock on my finger as hard as the ice outside,

Melted away and took my love of that boy with it.

In the fall, having fallen harder than ever before

Off the precipice that makes up life’s defining moments,

I turned back to you.

That winter we fell in love. I succumbed

To little i-love-you-lies that only lovers can tell,

Like a secret in the dark,

Falling on deaf ears.

Then, alone in that love, winter moved on

As time often does.

Distance has given me the understanding

Where only lovers meet.

My life is a song

Full-throated and slim,

Finally.

I will sing!

And I will whisper,

In the quiet way of lovers scorned,

Of a love kept in dark corners

And told about in keening cries

That you might mistake for song.

I will not disabuse you

Because I can sing in a whisper,

In a word, in a phrase.

I can write out these thoughts

In the only red ink God ever made.

This is the dead season.

Demeter’s barrenness

And Hades happiness,

So fleeting, his time of love.

But what of Persephone?

The young girl torn between

Creation and a yearning for Death

That she cannot understand.

Winter is fleeting,

Creation, like truth, has its place,

And Death will come.

There’s no time to waste.

If I am a poet then I am a double-edged sword

And you are at the end of my blade.

But holding on to this means of destruction

Hurts only me

When I have not the courage

To sever our ties.

An ocean separates us,

And these words, this theme of you and me,

Hurts only me.

You were a writer.

You called me your muse.

But then you called me a lot things:

Your firefly princess

Your little lost girl…

But always yours.

You don’t write anymore.

And I can’t stop.

As I live, as I breathe,

This writing habit is important to me.

You wrote poetry for me.

And now, my love, my Indian king,

You are lost to me.

Time has a way of making fools of us all,

And I play my part as I hate to disappoint.

Time has a way of healing all hurts,

But truth, kept alive, written in my own hand,

Can keep wounds fresh.

Time has ravaged me.

When I’m depressed I think of you,

And when I’m manic I hardly think at all.

I’m a mass of indecipherable words

And impulsive mistakes.

But when I’m depressed,

I drag out letters I wrote to you, but never sent.

I read them, and read of myself

The way a stranger looking in might do.

And it’s hard to remember, and impossible to forget,

Just how depressed, how desperate for Death ,

I have been.

But never again.

Until the next time it all becomes too much.

Until the next time I press cold blade to my Y-shaped vein.

Why do all your reasons for me to live revolve around you,

When you’ve made it clear that you don’t want me?

Manic, depressed, manic again.

My seasons change as fall changes to winter,

Gradually, and some day—

Not at all.

I have to believe the truth

Just as I believe the lies.

Like love and hate,

Truth to lie,

My passions were always high.

And you knew just how to draw them out.

The truth is I love you.

The truth is you loved me too.

The lie is I hate you.

But they’re both true.

This manifesto of words,

These verbs and nouns,

They speak of the heart,

Of a time-weary soul.

I imagine winter is like my soul.

Time-weary and lost to a warmth

That speaks of love.

These verbs and nouns,

This manifesto of words,

Speak to a heart

Swayed by pretty words.

Ruined and refined.

Pressed until worn thin.

I want a way to make you mine again.

But I know you’ll always be mine,

In the way whispers are:

When you whisper into another ear

The words are never the same.

So it is for me.

You are my whisper.

Told in a voice worn thin.

Ruined and refined.

Again.

Winter. White. Lack.

I miss you.

A Winter truth.