When Winter Fails To Snow
written by: Gerry S. Wojtowicz
We were in a season bereft of snow,
as if Autumn, as tenacious as a lover left,
just refused to let go.
She would look out the window at the slanted rain,
her dark eyes slowly closing as though to shutter a spill of tears.
“I wonder,” she said, “if it’s ever going to snow again.”
“The earth is having a hot flash,” I told her, “that’s all.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” she frowned
and left me alone as she padded down the darkened hall.
Of all the things that had conspired to cleave us in two
it never occurred to me that it would be the weather
that would finally render us askew.
In the morning I found a note on the kitchen table.
It said, “I’ll come and get my stuff when you’re gone.
Don’t try to find me, Able.”
I thought about being there when she returned,
maybe parking my car one street over,
but if I’d learned nothing else, at least this I’d learned;
we’d met at a time of unseemly desperation,
she was weary of the wrong men
and I was balanced on the edge of abdication.
It was like we’d clung to each other as we sank to the bottom of a cold black sea.
We brought each other down.
I wasn’t good for her. She wasn’t good for me.
So I’d let her go, or maybe she’d set me free.
It didn’t really matter since we both realized in our own tortured way
that we simply weren’t meant to be.
That was a time far away and long ago,
yet I find I still think of her
whenever winter fails to snow.
- Blinking at Mars - September 28, 2024
- The Lament - April 28, 2024
- When Winter Fails To Snow - January 18, 2024
