Bare skin in the snow,
She wasn’t prepared to be here.
Something decorative, out of place
In a transitioning landscape,
The darkness hides her footprints,
So she doesn’t have to remember the wrong turns
When they’re hidden in the night.

I don’t know how I ended up lost here,
But I can’t remember not being in this wood.
The air tastes like decaying leaves
And attempted young life,
The barren trees scratched at the sky,
Trying to hook their branches into something beautiful,
Perhaps because they remember that they too
Were once beautiful,
And harsh reality made them envious.

The trees were once breathtaking,
My youthful thoughts and emotions
Were once a kaleidoscope of warm pleasure
And entertainment.
But that’s all I remember of them,
I cannot remember comfort, or the introquet
Design of enjoyment.

It’s been what seems like an eternity now,
This place of cold wandering
Feels like the only life left to live,
It was hard enough to become accustomed to it,
How can she let all she knows be taken from her again?
She built her own small fortress out of branches
To keep her from having to look at the unsettling
Righteousness.

Trees are like emotions and circumstance,
The thicker they are… the more dense,
And you cannot see a way out of where you are,
You cannot possibly know
That there’s another way to go.
It makes it tempting to leave it all behind,
Bathe myself in the tranquility of nothing,
Feel the complete apathy
Wash into my mouth,
Flood my brain,
Swirl my hair around my forehead like a halo
So that I might tell myself
It’s right to not try anymore.
Cloud my vision in murky water I can die in
Instead of harsh branches, I can hide in.
All I am is lost.

She had found a way to feel comfortable In ice,
If you don’t know what it’s like to be warm,
If you don’t… Remember.
Why would you leave certainty for the unknown?
She became at ease in her woodland,
Her lost disposition,
Her unclear decisions.

I stumbled upon death on a path in the wood,
Examined the inky black
Soft and littered with water droplets on the ground.
It was only a piece of what had once been free,
And here it was,
Unresigned to it’s fate.
I turned back.

The wing flew back into her mind,
She knew in that moment
A lit up pathway out of the place of in between
Was a gift
That others lost here
Had fought for.
It was time to move on,
Even if it wasn’t clear where.