Snow falling slowly,
Muffling everything in sight,
The flakes like cotton *****,
Softening this morning light.

The wind is calm,
Bringing peace on this lake of ice,
Where down below lies the cold cold depths,
Down below,
Where my demons lie.

Such a juxtaposition,
Heaven and Hell,
Separated by the frozen water of my mind,
Serenity and Perdition,
Eternal reward and punishment,
So close and yet so distantly defined.

I look out upon the valley,
Where we lived out millions of lives,
All of our hopes and heartaches,
Births and deaths,
In that valley of flowers and dreams.

I met you so many times,
And each of those times I was blessed,
For in the few where we never met,
My heart ended up hollow and blank.

We struggled at times,
And sometimes we even failed,
But always together,
Never alone,
Not once adrift upon a sea of regrets.

You bolstered me in my aspirations,
Gave me courage and strength I knew not,
To conquer the mountains that seemed so insurmountable,
Where angels and demons were hesitant to trod.

Each of your deaths were a knife in my heart,
In those instances where I outlived you,
I broke into a million jagged pieces,
Lost without my guiding star.

But each time I would be able to slowly heal,
Brought back together by your future love.

I know not if we've done this countless times before,
Or if we will be able to have this countless times again,
But regardless of this,
Our lives shall be forever intertwined,
In the Valley of Flowers and Dreams...

You look at me,
Reading my face like a book,
When I think it is as solid as a tree,
You pour over the lines and crags like a Rosetta Stone,
Deciphering what I feel in my very bones.

It is alarming,
To have someone who gets so easily through my walls,
So carefully erected over the years,
But alarm is quickly followed by joy,
To have you in my inner bastion,
To assuage my worries and fears.

I don't think I'll ever quite get over the feeling,
That I don't ever deserve someone as good as you,
But in time I hope,
With care and shared memories,
That it will lessen and become an appreciation of something new.

Looking to the western sky that's aflame
With oranges, reds, and yellows
Highlighting and sharpening the clouds
Making them look like plumes of smoke from a forest fire
That is burning so far away

Later on the reds turn to purples
Losing the battle to the unstoppable night
Cooling in the dark of the wolfs muse
That howling place they rule with all their might

Blues lose out to the black
Deep and oh so dark
Quiet like some great predator
Rule absolute and oh so great
Giving out its boon to the animals of its domain
That will rule until the coming light

Sitting in my bedroom,
That's become more of a waystation than a home,
For home to me is wherever you will be,
Zach Bryan crackles out the words I know I will think of,
When I am 20 years older,
And our son has left behind our home.

A traveler on his own journey,
Embarking to his own destination,
In time making his own mistakes,
But in them learning his own lessons,
And from that his own wisdom will be gained.

He will visit,
I know,
Although his first couple of visits will be too few and far between,
It will make you teary,
But knowing that it needs to happen all the same.

Those days to come seem so far away now,
Yet so close all the same,
But I know that we will eventually come to love every minute of it,
And wish we could live through it all again.

Do you remember?
When we laughed so hard,
That I lost a contact?
That little jig you did started me chuckling,
My snorts got you to join in,
My ribs hurt the next day.

Do you remember?
When I told you that I first loved you,
And you kept me in suspense?
Later on, you told me that you felt the same when I said it,
But was scared that it was too soon for you to vocalize it too,
But to be honest I wanted to tell you on our second date.

Do you remember?
When you first seemed to read my mind,
And told me exactly what was going on in my brain?
I was furious with your father,
And I wanted to snap him in two,
You just looked at me with your hypnotic green eyes,
And told me to breath,
Rubbing my shoulders as you did so.

Do you remember?
That first pregnancy scare,
Where we didn't know what we were going to do?
We were in your car,
Outside that convention we were volunteering at,
And that talk laid the groundwork for what we would eventually have to go through.

Do you remember?
Our first kiss,
Upon that restaurant roof?
Slow dancing to Tyler Childers,
Playing through the tinny speakers of a phone,
On that warm sunny day in June.

I think back to 5 years ago,
To those days in northern New York,
Where my life felt like some coming-of-age tale,
Coming into my own.

Each day was its own chapter,
Shenanigans and hijinks,
Bar room brawls and short-lived loves,
Drunken tattoos and crutching on snow 2 feet deep,
Barracks parties and field exercise tomfoolery,
Oh, how it all seems like such a dream now.

Fleeing from authorities,
Cackling with buddies as we disappeared into the crowd to make it to the next bar,
Showing up to work on Monday with a recently broken nose, blackened eye, and ****-eating grin,
With my buddies sporting similar signs,
Our First Sergeant taking stock of these injuries,
And walking onward with a little smirk.

Walking through Watertown,
Feeling the age of that military town,
Filled with secondhand stores and oddities,
My God such a surreal dream.

Stuck in bed,
Knee wrapped up in bandages,
Protecting all the stitches beneath,
Looking out the winter at the blizzard outside,
Craving a working leg more than the percocet,
And knowing that the dream was coming to an end.