Winter came and went with a bang
Her eyes like sunshine always beaming with the thought of possibility
Her heart as big as the moon
Never able to pass up someone in need
All of us never to stop and think if she needed our help
She carried her own world on her shoulders
Just as Atlas did in the time when Greeks roamed the world.
Happily transgressing her sorrowful life
With a patience you never saw in someone Who was so hurt inside
Her mind every greedy for the adventure of her lifetime
Perhaps even now she seeks this adventure Even after she has gone
you can see her running through the forest barefoot
like she often did
Seeking for herself some sort of spectral adventure
With an imagination so unmatched
We often spent the nights in the woods
Telling stories of stranger things.
We used to lie there in a little grassy field
Under a single oak tree
Talking about our futures
Not yet even having a past to reminisce about
We were making our past
I remember a time once when she took me by the hand
And led me to a grand tree as she called it
She looked me in the eye and said to me something I would only expect my Winter to say
She leaned in close and whispered in my ear
“The Caterpillars Are Spies”
And then as if she knew I knew exactly what she meant
She winked at me
With a grin and a smile, I could only expect my Winter to give
We stood there and we just looked at each other
Both knowing we’re hiding behind our own childish nonsense
To try to hide the inner sorrow that is us growing older
And we did we grew older and older
And the world proved to be growing with us
She had begun growing tired of her great adventure never present
So we went and took our tests of life
I passed by the skin of my teeth only thanks to her
And she passed with the false pretenses of being alright
When I look back
Maybe how she did so well
Was because she was already so used to loosing
We began our voyage up that uphill slope we called life
Sometimes a shallow slope gently leading upwards
Most times a series of cliffs and canyons
We could only cross together
When the time came
Her worn climbing gear long needing maintenance
She fell
Leaving me scaling the side of this mountain alone
Her snap was like a tidal wave of emotion
Unconfined and uncontrollable
A hurricane of screams and sobs
A cacophony of this world’s sorrow
Echoing through the halls with the pretense that everything would be fine.
When she fell I was alone
Sitting there in a room with a nice lady asking questions about my lost friend
Questions they expected me to know the answer to
Questions I expected myself to know the answers to
But I didn’t
A year passes and I think about the facts
If I knew then what I know now
Maybe she wouldn’t have fallen
Maybe we’d be playing make believe at the corner of past and future
Maybe we could have kept moving
Our world would have been an open dictionary
Flung to the page Ma to Mc with the highlighted word
“Maybe”
Another year passes and I sit down in class
It’s been four years
A month now and I’ll be leaving this town
So I want due with what I can while I have it
So I call my Winter on the phone forever being fourteen
I’m greeted with the same cheery voice
And I give her my final two cents after the beep
The caterpillars were spies
And I smile and I march
I march out to our little grassy plain and I write
Winter came and went with a bang.