Walking in Winter

I am cut off from myself.

A dividing line runs through me.

If you are looking for me, here I am– and here I am not.

Since 2005, when the cord was cut (first temporarily, then permanently), I shut a door.

I wedged it shut.

I went out for a walk in winter and I have not returned.

See? I am doing it now, even right now. Holding you away, an arm length away. You can feel it. I know it.

I used to sit and dump heavy buckets of my love and pain into letters: letters to friends, letters to lovers.

Now I am here and my letters are barely notes.

They are just snippets of anger, bits of advice, tiny rants, little in-jokes. They are cold.

I’ve been wandering and waiting for three years now, for a fresh snowfall, for an iceburn, and I am still waiting. I toss logs on the fire and circle myself with metaphors. The internal life is missing they tell me. They are right.

Being alone, made me alone. Not slower or simpler. Just aloner, and loster and goner.

And there are no snow tracks to follow back.