When Winter Claimed Her
Her breath caught the moment her feet hit the driveway.
The door snapped shut behind her.
The bite of winter gnawed at her neck.
Skeleton trees hung in the dusk sky,
stripped completely raw—
not a leaf left to cover their delicate frames.
Down the long driveway,
he leaned against his orange-and-white streaked motorbike,
ridden together on countless summer nights—
air, speed, and warmth knitting them together
like sea sewn to sand.
The sound of her steps,
as she padded the pavement,
lifted his head.
His blue-crystal eyes met her winter-grey
and pierced her heart like shards of ice.
Shore-gold hair framed his face.
His gaze held hers—
like that night they first met,
when he glued her back to the girl she'd been,
in those tender summer years.
His laughter had been as luscious as the sun kissing the shore,
calling her nautilus heart from its shell
to run free and dance on the bank
in the safety of his love.
But frost had come creeping up her back,
and the black of night smothered the light,
whispering in her ear—
“You’re not worthy.”
Summer slowly frosted over.
The brittle voices froze her solid.
Mistakes were made—
her soul too broken for a love that glowed like the sun,
that tried to halo her unhaloable heart.
So he came to her on this cold, silent night,
to deliver a message on a silver dish,
cracked with broken dreams.
As they stood facing each other,
a slice of frost-crisp concrete jutted between them.
“This isn’t working anymore.”
His voice cracked through the air like an avalanche.
“We can’t be together,”
he nailed his words to the sky.
And the sun blacked out.
He left soon after,
the smoke of his bike cutting through the night.
She watched until the taillight vanished into the dark,
until the wind swallowed him whole,
and the night closed over the road.
Frost gathered beneath her feet.
The skeleton trees stared down—
“You belong to us,” they whispered.
She wrapped her coat around her shivering body,
but the cold crept through the cotton,
and winter curled around her bones.
She stood alone beneath the naked branches,
and knew—
in her broken frosted heart—
that she had been the one,
not him,
who let the winter in.
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