A Forest of Thoughts

The wind blew in new air, and with it old memories. 

The snowflake fingerprints you made that dissolved when they touched my hand.

Each one unique, can't belong to anyone else,

Standing out against the pale horizon 

Of my skin and a winter sky.

The withering sound of a long lost voice

Swept away by the crackling of icicles and years

Getting lost amid the pines of weeks and briars of more lost dreams.

But every trail I pick out through the woods of time still leads me back to you.

Tripping through poison ivy days I'd never live again

Happening upon a place in my mind I thought I had left behind.

I found you waiting in the summer, with thriving green eyes

The only clue that there was once something that could survive.

And I sat on the log, by your side where I was

When the snowflake fingerprints fell.

Enraptured by the thought that not all snow freezes and kills.

Then the bitter frost of reality snapped the branches down to earth

Slaughtered the shoots of new happenings

And the birds flew away...

But I exhale onto a dandelion

Watching the seeds dance

Wondering where they're going to land, or if they'll return by chance,

Hoping that when the frost is lifted

And the sun decides he's ready to shine

I'll see a glimpse of green again.

But that this time it will stay,

So that when I return from my memory's dense thicket

Caked in mud and snow

I can look at my own front yard

and see summer once again.