Time Is In Sight But Beyond Reach

Winter is on the tips of her fingers. Winter is silver on her breath as she exhales, oxygen stamped with her name, forgotten as either one, stiffening into smoke like her hair against the twilight. Her tears are winter on her face - winter ice like her eyes when she can force them open. Winter is in her poinsettia smile, wrinkles rising while she remembers this scarf, the first time she wore it, that Christmas when he was there to kiss her nose and give her champaine-promise, stomach-flutter feelings again and again and see her eyelashes when they filled up with snow like pearls on a string. Winter is turning, a music-box key in her throat as she feels her head bowing of it's own accord from the sky to the dirty grey slush of the sidewalk. Winter stops her ears to people passing, wondering at a very old woman in a ratty old coat and one very red, frayed scrap of knitted cloth bunched up in her claw fingers like the blood in her veins, becoming winter. Winter hums christmas carols in her heartbeat while she shudders and sobs against the cold - and silent night, the virgin birth slowing into a winter evening lit only by streetlamps. She grasps blindly at the whisper of pipe-smoke and familiar old love when his ghost hits her with a mistle-toe touch on her cheek. She listens to the ice splinter, cracking skin. She wipes her face, trickling down like the night to the street, hearing the clock tick, all those longing little chimes like winter on her senses. It's twelve-o-clock now. She shuffles on.