Winter is back again

The sun leaves a little earlier

The moon rises so soon,

The clock ticks like a pulsing bruise of time diminishing with light.

An empty season, Dead.

Cold and without reason

Somebody was whispering words in the wind, a poem of quiet warfare.

His voice was rugged, and he spoke of Hope, of Love.

Of the things the snow forget,

And he told me of the war fought without guns,

But shed blood that forever stained the battlefield, red that drowned in the

snow.

The man reminded the winds of loneliness

He reminisced of a woman he lost.

How her love could have set the world on fire, an intense heat,

And that her eyes were a golden brown,

A heart shaped face that jumpstarted his own beating breath.

But the war took her,

When the clouds gathered and the skies turned grey, his dear love

Took herself to the cliffs.

Her sanguine fluids dyed the frozen grasses beneath her,

A fall no man could save.

As he took a breath, and the winds picked up for a moment,

I recalled a little girl I’d loved too.

Hair that I’d ran my fingers through,

And tiny hands to grasp.

The whisperer picked his words,

“That year I lost more than a woman,

I lost my smile. I lost hope in life; I’d lost my closest friend,

My wife.

Her children’s dying screams still echo in my ears.

The winter lasted too long,

We tasted salty tears in sleepless nights that’d keep ‘til morning rose.

Warfare rang deep.

Women would run from burning homes,

Children learned to rock themselves to icy slumbers on the street,

Winter isn’t for the weak, winter whispers lyrical lies.”

The word lies faded into the wind, dying.

As I realized it’d been my mouth all along telling the story, I spoke once more to the grave, listening winds:

“Winters come, and waging wars will follow.

You’ll breathe on fields where mother’s cried,

And where boys were sent to be killed,

You’ll take someone’s life, and

Miseries are yours if you live.

I always thought I’d live for this girl,

Her hands I’ll never forget.

Our honeychild, who was left to die, there was a knife wedged in his heart.

This blood I’ll always wear, tainted on my skin.

I wanted to kiss the stars

And chase her windmills.

I’ve taken my son’s ring to the girl he left in his home.

She cried, too.

You’ll say goodbye to people who can’t hear you, kid.

You’ll lose yourself in the quiet, damned madness of winter.

I did.”

And I laid my head down, on that little wife’s grave, I put my palm to my son,

So with that last breath I took,

I allowed myself to think,

“Goodbye, Winter.

Goodbye, Warfare.”