Tired of Waiting

The freshness of a winter sky spritzes my heart with tiny shards of pain. The kind that scars something magnificent into your soul. They are prickling fingernails scratching my skin, welcoming the cold into my chambers.

It’s the season for miracles, for wonder and a bubbling gleam rippling through bare branches laced with remnants of falling leaves. A time to dream the impossible, to close one’s eyes tightly into sockets and furrow brows and wish upon star after dazzling star for the moment that transcends the ordinary. We are all straining for spectacular.

In the deep blue struck with streaks of moonlight, I am frozen by puffs of my lungs that dance against my lips before turning to fly into the pieces of night calling for friction. These days I can’t seem to keep warm. Blood rushes to the parts of my body that escape me, that I can’t keep tabs on, that run through me with laughter from gritted teeth.

All year I have been a boat on shore, bobbing in grainy sand, an illusion of sea. In a blurred horizon shadows flicker, wave me forward and as a man panning for gold, I am enticed by the shine. Patience. The words whispers itself to me and there is something quite catching in its voice that I keep myself still, poised to follow.

Temperatures drop. Colors drain and ground hardens into a ruthless earth. The snow sprinkles early, and activity bustles. The world readies for a great deliverance, and in the flurry I, too, am caught by a dream.

Light posts grab a glint of fabricated illumination and my steps fill in shadow. Their pattern traces circular, around mirrored space well worn with my wait for the wondrous.

But it is too cold to play games. I am tired of waiting. Tired of pressing my face against the glass for a glimpse of the impossible. Tired of my heart throbbing raw in expectancy, ballooning with hope and expelling air as days roll into one another and no answers come.

This ice slices right through me.

A string of constellations slide into place above my head. The frigid air stings my eyes, but still I beam my heart into the sky and wait, breath suspended. Hope stays. Tucked in a fold of my skin I forget to check, nudging me, opening the cage inside my chest and telling me I am ready, truth sewn into its honest gaze.

How the world revolves at such a spin. How the heavens arrange themselves and send a little light to a darkened heart. How precious is the pressing hope that wavers but never falls.

Silver and blue, sparkle and shine. Frost burns against me, pooling in a steaming puddle of remorse that dissipates and is forgotten. The dusky dreams so blurred and out of reach breeze closer in the giving winds. I am tired of waiting, but the weight of what I’ll reach once winter pushes past gives me strength to stand another blast of night on watch.