I'll follow you if you follow me
I don't know why you lie so clean
I'll break right through the irony
Enlighten me
Reveal my fate
Just cut these strings
That hold me safe
you know my head
You know my gaze
You'd know my heart
If you knew your place
I'll walk straight down
As far as I can go
My shoes are wet and soaked with creosote and my hands are ice-cold this morning. Butterfield and I ran the tracks until I couldn't see my neighborhood anymore and didn't really know where we were but I knew I could turn at any time and just follow the line back the way I came.
There are giant standing pools of filthy winter water where the snow used to be, within which rests litter of eight months of indoor weather and outdoor helplessness. Somewhere is even the wrapper from a granola bar I ate in a hurry one day as I tried to multi-task on a walk and then I realized when I was halfway back that I must have dropped the wrapper when I pulled my mittens out of my pockets. It was simply too cold to go back. My penance will always be picking up water bottles and coffee cups from in front of my house. People park up and down my street on football game days and they're a messy beerish lot. I pick up after them quite a bit.
I've brought the windchimes and the angel statue out of winter storage. They're by the back door along with all the lawn chairs and patio lights, ready to go out the minute the snow goes. Then I'd like to sweep the little pebbles off the big flat rocks and rake the grass up well so it grows, lush and green and then maybe I'll excavate a little in the front since we have worn a path cutting through the front yard from the side for as long as we've lived here to go to school. May as well give up on grass in front and do a path and some bark and maybe a few low flowering shrubs, hardy ones to get through the winter. I failed to protect the junipers this winter, having been left by Jacob mere days before I was to head out with burlap and stakes and it just never got done but the bushes look okay so far.
The steps need to be fixed, I want to paint the front door, maybe later this week, and I need to paint one of the kitchen doors too because I forgot and just noticed it today.
While all that goes on I'll begin washing and putting away winter things, we're now in lighter cold weather gear. The hats and big heavy mitts can go. Ruth's boots that hurt her legs because they are stiff and new, my hikers, barely broken in.
I'm going to put winter away. A time a year for me that speaks of promise and warmer nights and days I can think without it hurting so much.
And last night Ben came home and kissed me hard and lingered so long, when I finally pulled away and stared at him, he grinned. I asked him what was so funny and he said it wasn't funny but it was amazing. The whole way home, he said he held his breath, to give to me. It wasn't literal but I knew what he meant and I love it all the same.
