New Free-verse: Winter Wilt

Winter Wilt.

Darling, don't you smell it on my breath?

We have that beautiful path alongside the house,

the same one you spent those summers at.

Obsessively placing rocks,

and trimming the flowers that grew alongside it.

Those flowers that grew so vibrant, and so plentiful.

And oh, how you cried when winter crawled in,

and swallowed all your pretty colors.

How you cried when the earth shifted,

and moved your stones slightly out of place.

Everything is always changing.

Darling, can't you smell it on my breath?

Perhaps it's just your gentle soul,

a quality I used to think endearing.

But I see your petite outline sitting by that clock,

thinking you can watch the hands tick themselves

all the way around until spring.

I want to shake you sometimes, because they will come back.

They always do, just like we have so many times.

But I feel as though there is a hole in my stomach,

letting all manner of terrible things slip through.

Little monsters that burrow deep and eat away at me.

Darling, by now you have to smell it on my breath.

I walked down that path on my way here,

breathing through my mouth, like I know you hate.

It melted the snow, turning the frozen dirt to mud,

of which I tracked into this room now.

I hope it doesn't remind you of fresh rain.

If you're mad about cleaning up the mud though,

I'm sure that broken bottle of Old No. 7 in our bedroom

will make matters even worse.

It's all fairly silly, isn't it?

That we'd rather be miserable than lonely?

I'm sorry to make this winter harder on you,

but I can promise you'll make it through.

Unless of course you don't, 

but I cannot pull you anymore,

not when you dig in your heels the entire time.

Don't think it's the alcohol talking.

This is me.

I am talking, but not for much longer.

I'm not the man I used to be, 

I know that now.

You're not the same woman either,

I know that now, too.

Please don't hate me, unless that helps.