I can now comprehend

Why people equate winter to loneliness.

I never used to understand it;

Winter was always my favorite season.

It was my passion.

 

I loved

            -still love-

                               the sweaters

and tall knit socks

and thick black coffee

and warm fireplace fires

That warm your toes after a trek through the cold winter snow.

 

I always aspired

To move to the mountains of New England

Where the snow creeps all the way to your knees

and my sweaters and socks can be worn well into spring

and occassionally in the summer as well.

 

I had a plan

                      to marry winter

So I had no reason to believe

The all to common stigma

That winter is the embodiment of lonliness

That it is the darkest season.

 

                   But then,

I fell in love

                    in the winter.

He came like a blizzard

Ripping at my sturdy, insulated walls

Covering every inch of my world in a blinding white.

 

I fell in love

Like a child experiences her first snowfall.

Amazed and afraid

Confused and bewildered

Stumbling as the snow around me dissolved.

 

I ventured out

Into the wild and the white

I braved the storm

What I found was perfection

What I found was the most amazing sensation I could ever.

 

I found warmth

A warmth like no sweater could produce

like no sock could contain

like no coffee could conjure

like no fire could procure.

 

I love him.

When he lies behind me

Encompasses me like the towering snowfalls

I had always dreamt of,

I am no longer alone.

 

I am transported

                       from the lonely, 

                                                    the cold

From the world of inexperienced children

Of dazed dreamers

Into the world of warmth

Into the world of him.

 

I am warm.

It is unlike the past summers' heat

That I had despised and dismissed

That melted my spirit

and had always meant loneliness to me.

 

I loved this warmth

                                  -love

But this unknown season never lasts.

The sun sets

And we teenagers are instructed to return home

To our cold winter beds.

 

I am loneliness.

Loneliness is being stripped of warm red leaves

Plunged into the stormy wasteland

naked

...alone

 

I have nothing

to break the sharp knife of the slicing winter winds.

All I want is one night

one night in the warmth

I only get a few moments.

 

I am spinning,

My world is thrown off its axis.

Hurdling

                  through a darkness I never imagines

Stumbling

                   through a snowfall I always envisioned

My seasons are always changing.

 

I know

That the winter will just grow longer.

There will come a day when it lasts months.

For many

                  and one day myself

This winter will come to last forever.

 

I am afraid

Of when my long winter will come.

When nothing will let me experience the warmth

Like he does

When nothing is my passion like winter once was.

 

I am learning

What countless poems portray

What endless songs shout

Through the lyrics I could never understand

I could never comprehend.