The sun plays hide-and-go-seek on a midwinter's afternoon,
Darting constantly towards the next available cloud.
Shielded.
Beside my intermittent shadow flutter my companions,
Guided by the ever-changing, blustery gusts.
The snowflakes follow me home.

Windy, wafting whispers winding through dormant branches,
I hold my breath and count to ten to ignore their murmurs.
Gossiping.
Hazy February clouds conceal indistinct peeps.
Should nobody else join me,
The snowflakes follow me home.

As I pass through the threshold and traipse across the floor,
Legs chilled and wavering over creaky wooden planks.
Weary.
But I glimpse once more, out through tempered glass panes,
Reassured and reveling in the knowledge,
*The snowflakes follow me home.

These constellations are just stale light.
Dimmer than the orange haze from streetlights,
Each proudly signaling the triumph of mankind.

These constellations are dead beacons from afar.
I need no north star to get home,
Street signs guide me just fine.

These constellations are bright ***** of dust.
Romanticized into patterns,
I can only remember the big dipper.
And passing planes.

These constellations are lifeless light.

I awoke from pseudo-sleep to frigid sweats and an unhealthy heartbeat
my mind snowy as the television opposite me, morning, half past three.
I dreamt up a personal narrative, reflecting on dreams forgone
time deferred, potential memories collecting dust on a suburban lawn.
Similar to that of books gifted to me, never read, and currently locked,
Vonnegut converses with Hemingway within a cavernous box.
Tucked neatly beside the dehumidifier, bottom level of my fortress
My once-manicured front yard so overgrown, you'd expect wild horses
galloping about like I once did before my femur weathered like sea glass,
leaving me like my alabaster figurines, just more stationary mass.

I've grown accustomed to drawn curtains and opening them at nightfall,
my eyeballs have grown to love staring contests with my blankest wall.
Not-quite-yet-discarded alcohol bottles have become my closest fellows,
kind enough to let me grasp them as action figures between my yellowed fingertips. We'd make dates to watch Local on the 8's together,
humming along blissfully to the muzak without regard to the weather.
Since my everyday life now remains a comfy 72 degrees, accompanied
by a soundtrack of leaky faucets and turning pages of AARP magazines.

Now completely alone I float, clinging to life in a sea of unknown
Clawing a barely buoyant lifevest filled with styrofoam and rhinestones
If I were still as spry as a spring chicken, I'd walk ten paces in the kitchen,
I'd draw my nine and snipe a mirror for displaying an unpleasant image.
If my eyes had less cataracts I'd be in the process of shredding them to bits
because I never wanted to peer through lenses so dull and spiritless.
If my ears were better, I'd hear fewer phantom telephone rings,
answer every telemarketer, hear more synthetic voices advertising things.
I'd never touch my college sweaters for the regrets they would conjure,
But now I'm finally grown up, wasn't that what I always wanted?