We’d known each other for so long before
always your beauty I’d tried to ignore
your essence, your aura I would silently intake
treading cautiously, not to make a mistake
while heading out all alone in the cold
toward my emotional winter
And then, like a dream, you came to me
diaphanous, ethereal, wild and free
you were, that night, so wonderful to behold
delicate, like a rose, I helped you unfold
your body on fire, tenderly mine to hold
but your eyes betrayed a story, untold
inevitable
like dark icy clouds pushing me onwards
into my emotional winter
I knew all the time it was too good to be true
making love would be the last thing we would do
you are not to blame, no, the fault is mine
in desperate confusion, I stepped over the line
stranded, desolate, no one to hear me call
and then the snow began to fall
This pain inside me is all too real
the intense emotion inside that I feel
when I think of you, and my deep desire
to have and to hold you, to burn in your fire
but you are gone, just a hot memory
as the snow deepens all around
I don’t really know why, but I still want you so bad
when often I think of the brief time we had
compassion, love, guilt, desire and sadness
the confusing feelings driving me to madness
a dark deadly storm, cutting cold and deep
I’m lost within my emotional winter
Now, everywhere I turn I see your face
a cold illusion, it makes my heart race
I thought I had control of the situation
but I’m so consumed by runaway emotion
and forever now I will be caught
any struggle will come to naught
locked
in the eternal glacial freeze
of my Emotional Winter
Michael A. Barnett 12.9.95
poems of life, love, loss, lust, and hope 