#142

Time to get back on the pony..15 minutes no stops. Here's the story start:
When the winter arrived he was grateful for
the anonymous way it covered over everything. He was grateful for the way silence was like a cloak over everything. Voices were quieter, people faked kindness and he'd take it. Sometimes fake kindness is better than none and he had little in his life,so fake was just fine with him. The winter brought the snow, the ice. It held beauty in it's starkness. It's crystal, like a nature glass works outside his windows. He lived for the fireplace. The crunch of the snow underfoot and the blanket of snow on the ground. It made the brown and barren somehow seem so much better. The cold was like a constant slap in the face and for now it was what he felt he deserved, needed. It was the season. The holiday part of it was a chore, but it too brought out some fake connections. There were suddenly invitations from people that the rest of the year could have cared less if he lived or died. Now suddenly they wanted him to come to their elaborate homes and eat their cocktail meatballs and drink micro brews he'd never heard of and secretly dumped down the bathroom sink because they tasted vaguely of feet and toilets. He was thrilled and dismayed at the odd cards that filled up his mailbox, strangers really, frightening pictures of someone elses savior, a concept he couldn't grasp, just because he didn't want to, didn't care. He was content in his vacuum, not happy, but content. It was a space all his own and undisturbed. It was his. Very little was his. Everyone was always pulling at him, pushing his head under the water, but in the winter, everyone took a break getting caught up in the glamour of the holiday season. Twinkling lights seemed to make every ones mean flicker in and out. I mean not everyone, there were plenty who simply took this opportunity to be even more bitter and drink harder. But those were not his people. He knew they were not. He quietly kept his bitterness to himself, his drinking done in the dark of his own apartment. There was no need to flaunt brokenness. Somehow it was better savored alone. It's a long way down. He knew it well. He'd been down a long, long item. Almost too long. The winter also offered up the possibility. The ice the snow the storms, tragedy was always right there, waiting behind the next slip, the next car skidding across the ice, the next power failure, the next slip on the ice and skull crushing blow to the frozen concrete. He always hoped a little in the winter. Hoped that his end would come and he would not see another spring. Spring held no promise for him. There was no rebirth in his life. It was just repetitive failings and the spring just rubbed it in that he had failed the winter and not allowed it to finish him. Somehow his luck was wrong and he had let himself come out the other side alive. It was not his plan but somehow it never worked out according to his plan. He loved winter. Looked forward to it. But it always thwarted his plans. When the thaws came he obsessively watched the weather to make sure he'd have one last opportunity. He took advantage of every last winter storm. He was always the one out driving when the weather announcers said if you can avoid it in any way, stay off the roads and indoors. That was a code for him to go get in his car in short sleeves, run it until there was no gas left and look for the black ice on the freeway, but every time, it would clear, it would thaw and he would end up at a Mobil or a Kwik Trip filling up and heading home. In the end, he'd be pulling into his garage, then going into the house and taking a shower reserving him self, stealing his resolve knowing that a spring was coming, just right around the corner. There would be a spring. This winter was just around the corner. The fall days were at their ends. The frost was there now in the morning. He was longing for the bleak to arrive. It was his long lost friend, his comfort in the crystal frozen across the window glass. The lost footing on the sidewalk ice a welcome feeling, that lurch, that letting go and hoping for a skull crunching blow on the frozen cement. This was going to be his winter.