Certainty

beneath the loud music, i can just guess that the snow crunches under my tires as i pull into my snow covered driveway.

i turn off the engine, hook my finger thought the silver ring of my car keys. i just sit waiting for the cars interior light to diminish and let the darkness invade.

the dark embraces me, fills me with its cold silents. the dark and cold and silents sooths me, but are unable to loosen the talons of the hag time from my bloodied back and shoulders.

i am keenly aware that these claws sink deeper and deeper and her sharp yellow teeth sink into my tender neck and spills the life from me in a steady oozing stream.

i feel the tickle feeling of the trickle of my life leaking away, and i sigh, knowing that there is no reprieve, no amnesty, no clemency, only a continuation of the same .

i sit staring at the Christmas lights leaking there color and defiance into the strangling dark. i shift in my seat, but make no move to get out. I'm content for the moment to sit, listen to the silents and gaze at the color lights that punctuate the night.

there is no escaping, no fixing, no cure for life. its not a sentence, nor a disease, nor a mechanical beast that can stall, or break.

time, time, time, i feel its weight, i breath in its dust and open my mouth wide and drew in its taste. its salty, it tastes of brine, it taste of the sea. a taste of shorelines and gulls, of tides and waves. it tastes of storms and wind and warmth, and bone snapping cold. it tastes of brine, it tastes of death and birth, it tastes of salt.

i stair at my home, the porch that stretches across its length, the tall wooden fence that stretches from the side to the gate and the sign that has a picture of two German Shepard's, and the warning "be aware of dogs". some warm light leaks out of the front window, soft, muted and diffused, from the window on the second floor, the tinny twinkle of fairy lights almost drowned in the darkness, beckon me to come home.

still reluctant to get out of the car i squander my time, and try to shiver off the regret and sadness that has settled its fine dust on me. i could surrender to an avalanche of of regret and even bitterness, but the survivor in me knows that regrets are futile, but bitterness, i could slide into a life of bitterness, i know pain and i have had an intimate relationship with grief.

i try mightily to avoid bitterness, i struggle not to fall into that sea of no return. but i do carry a sadness with me, a sadness that may never leave, at best it will become thin and narrow, and for periods of time i will be able to fold it away into a closet.

but in that house before me, outlined in lights on this winter night, is all that i love so dearly that i could not survive with out them, i would be diminished, and be only a shell traveling to the grave.

i have reached this point of time, this moment in my life, through my choices, or non choices, which are choices whether i am to admit it or not. there is no blame to lay for how my life has turned out, there is no mouth full of bitterness to spew..

i am here because i have chosen to be. some good choices some terrible, some made with knowledge and insights some made in anger and rage, some have turned out well some horribly.

but ultimately there is no blame, only ownership. mine.

at times my life is hard, sharp and painful, but even at its most painful, those people in that house have eased me through my most bloodied of times.

i sigh, knowing that if there is not a great upheaval within my self, if there is a continuation on this contorted and numbing path, all that i hold dear, will vanish , evaporate in the salt sea of time.

there is an urgency for change, for my will to rise up within my self, and grasp my unspent desire.

before me there is a necessity for change, to not become lost in the stillness of the moment, not to lose myself to agony or grief, or despair.

but now there is an imperative to grasp my choices, to grasp my possibilities, and to move on through this darkness.

to what? at this juncture there is no certainty, its possible that all my efforts will not change an inevitable outcome, but there is a certainty that if i passively continue on this path, the inevitable will most certainly come to pass.

i finally shake off my pensive moment and get out of the car into the nipping cold, grab my hockey bag, and stick, and head into the house where all my possibilities lie.

and i remind my self, baby steps, baby steps.