Melissa
walks.
Each footfall
shatters ice-covered snow.
The wind
caresses her,
anoints her in
sorrow.
Melissa walks, and
twilight presses on her
shoulders, bows her head before the coming
night.
Melissa walks, and the sun falls behind her,
hiding the future in long shadows, a shadow
which she knows
is partly her own.
Melissa
walks,
comforted by the cold.
Insulated and isolated. She walks,
silhouetted branches arching over her, each
encrusted with its own
crystal burden.
The road ahead snakes and turns,
disappears
around a hillside.
Hidden uncertainties.
And still she walks.
Alone, without warmth or light, joy,
or
hope for the future, she walks.
“For you can’t
stop,” she says, “Or the cold will take you.
And
you can’t turn back, behind there is only
night.”
So Melissa walks, a
tear frozen to her lashes.
And around this bend
there is only another bend.