Lost in Winter

He slurs his words as he spoke, it was starting to snow.  The sky was backdropped in a sea of black for miles on end with only the sporadic street lit pavement as vantage points.  They stuck out like stationary fireflies along the road.  He didn't need them despite the lack of sobriety, he knew this road all too well.  His long shuffle alone in the cold familiar dark was accompanied only by the hot breath that escaped his chest; which was lost to the ice riddled air in between his incoherent conversations to nobody.  Even the occasionally wiz of passerby cars cutting through the black as they whipped their way home went altogether unnoticed in his vapid dialog with the dark.   He talked endlessly, staggering his words through a tongue that couldn't keep up with his jack rabbit of a mind.  It was then that he lurched over, hands drawn to his knees, a hard dry heave that sprung from the pit of his chest was the lone culprit to his abrupt stop.  He turned slightly as if to address and continue on speaking with his absent companion but instead of a monolog of a boozy bourbon humdrum speech, a short shriek dribbled from his mouth as a hot cloud oozed up from his mouth.  Then in an instantaneous switch like from white to black or from night to day his mindless ramble to his nobody accomplice that had stopped mid mumble now became a full frontal assault as he swung a hardened fist in the direction of his would-be partner.  Now violently swinging his arms he looked for the knockout punch.  Seemingly there was no reason for this solitary act of aggression but he whiffed clumsily with his left hook misses his target completely.  He swung again, a devastating body shot that nobody but the black air around him could feel, he staggered forward now, his equilibrium lost. The street lamp played tricks on him as white snow confetti danced down through the light.  He stumbled, trying to make contact, swinging again only more widely and out of pace. The firm pavement soaked with fresh powder, starts to slush between his shoes that were sliding and stumbling along what felt like soggy sandpaper.  It is then he trips and falls face first into slush hardly breaking his fall, he rolls onto his back and looks up blindingly into the halogen lamp some twenty feet up into the air.  He rocks himself up, and now trying to catch his absent attacker off guard, he throws his fist again blindly as his vision tries to catch up.  Again he staggers.  He fumbles.  He falls.  Crashing forward into the wooden railing that separates the pavement from the ledge, he breaks through the deadwood beam as he soars over the edge into the darkness, gravity pulling him down.  He crashes into the water cracking through the thin layer of ice, sobering him instantly.  The air escapes him, leaving his body empty as he continues to sink.

We still got time- 
well we still had time, once upon a dream...

You were my jukebox hero, my saving grace, the so right to my so many wrongs.  Why'd you have to go and leave, to follow in Winter's footsteps?

 - But I've been grounded hard from my long flight into oblivion.

The water dances around his hair

I thought once of better times, of happier times in your arms...
how silly a thought. 

He kicks up trying to surface, but he continues to sink

Yesterday I came to see you resting by the river, you were hypnotized in your trance. Frozen to time.
I wonder what I thought would change after all this time. 

His once protective coat that shielded him from the cold now sucks him down with each vainful attempt to push up

she fell through the ice, how were we to know?  You always blamed yourself for it.

I can't take your empty eyes anymore... 
Now drift softly into my melancholy as I push you further into your infant glassy-eyed state of trauma.  

The bubbles are rocketing out from his mouth as they break free from the stratosphere

Our baby's gone lost to the winter for which we named her. 

Instinctively he flapped his arms heavily, trying to propel himself out

but I was gone too, 
I was lost to you forever the moment we lost her.  But the truth was I never stopped loving you
you were the one that stopped.

We buried our love in Winter's grave.  Nothing really matters - and you just sit and cry anyway. 

My cancerous words dropped like bombs, the pitter patter of word diarrhea beat against your brow and their pain washed away any feeling that was left inside you. 

The tide is starting to rise as I drowned in a sea of our memories. 

  They say their are beacons for lost ships.  I am so far lost now the only light is at the bottom.  
It's getting hard to breath now.     

He sucks in water. Needles digging into his wet water-logged skin. 


Now these are just the uncensored thoughts 
of an old man
lost in the bottle
of his own inactive destructivity 
prolonged by the mortified gratitude 
of the numbing miracle elixir that covers up the things I never had the heart to say. 

I watched you fade away into your own darkness
never to resurface, never to try again 

I can't blame you for choice 
she was our first, our only
but you were my first and my only 
doesn't that mean anything?

I hoped to see you one day 
after all this
maybe I will

He thrusts up trying to continue on, only to fall again, drifting further down.
He gasps for air in the vacuum of black water

It's cold.
I am not shivering.
I'm beginning to like the dark.