Winter

It's cold enough now. Cold enough outside so that it doesn't seem so cold within.

Harsh habits chap naked lives until they're raw. I never felt like an adult until I became an addict.

Winter always makes me envy the trees. How every autumn they shed each leaf. And all winter long they wear nothing at all. But still, come every spring, they always grow new ones in their place.

I'm no good at letting those leaves fall. Nor very adept at replenishing.

The colors may change. But the colors were never what I saw.

Life is what they were. Connected to me by the most slender of links. Growing mysteriously from of these dead branches.

I could blame the wind. Blame the seasons for severing us. But I know I just didn't hold them tight enough. Or that they chose to leave.