My Life on Hold - Nov 27 2022

 

My Life on Hold

Nov 27 2022

A midwinter thaw.

I think of easy living.

Of permanent summer

and escaping the cold for good.

The path of least resistance

the geographic cure.

I have lived my whole life

in this fugue state,

restlessly passing the time

with my life on hold

until I could put all this behind me

and start with a clean slate,

in the next stage

or at least someplace else.

Find my better self

and emerge transformed.

The past, magically erased,

as if a change of scenery

was all it took.

As if in the cold and dark

I had congealed;

my blood thickened and slowed,

heart condensed

into a hard contracted fist.

But the thaw was ugly.

The snow sloppy, soiled, rutted,

the sky

heavy and dull.

Water dripped unstoppably,

rattling the downspouts

and overflowing the eaves;

a metronome

counting down time.

People are tortured like this,

tied down

with a slow regular drip

in the middle of their forehead;

the helpless anticipation

the same infernal spot.

As relentless

as hot and humid weather

day after day.

A samelessness

I think would feel more claustrophobic

than snowed-in ever would.

So I've learned to love winter,

am determined to stay.

Because the past is always with us,

no matter how hard we try

to leave it behind.

And the work on myself continues

rain or shine.

(Spellcheck flagged samelessness. I googled, and apparently it isn't recognized as a word. Yet the listings also included a quote that contained it. Either way, I think it's a perfectly grammatical construction, and I have no compunctions about continuing to use it.)