fog in the roads

making driving harder than the rain

and some burnt candle smell

outside the windows

as if this were all a holiday facade

a miniature world on someone's mantle

lit by flame

i am drunk

in warmth and christmas carols

and my coat feels like something i should sleep in

and i wish i could be out with the people i love

in blinking lights and layers of frost

mist rises from the road

and water washes toward the car,

spraying the under-carriage as the tires spin

and there is a greened tint to the air

recycling bins zombies emerging from driveways

deep nights and deep feelings and i wish i could stay out and embrace them

instead of returning home

a defeated conqueror

lost in the fog of my own mind

lamenting the distance of once-a-year weather

likely already gone

traded for skirts and plunging necklines

and someday i will feel the fog rising from my grave

and lament the days lost to life

and the blindness of spirit

and i will search for those i've lost

and i fear that i will only find them on nights like this

once-a-year nights

back when i spent hours with rocks and caterpillars and ideas

there were such things as secrets

things too big to share

things which had lives of their own

stored up in my chest

monsters that i didn't know how to release

without them tearing me up on their violent escape

and these were not things told to friends

because friendship was so fragile and fickle and tenuous

and could so easily dissolve,

and because i wasn't these secrets

and i didn't deserve to be associated with them,

further weight against my forming personality

and i still keep secrets

because that is the thing to do

when something is so horrible that its escape

would maul those in its path

would massacre or mangle all souls within range

but no one else keeps my secrets

they spill out in a torrent

and people talk

and soon everyone knows

and my childhood instincts were correct

that someone cannot know a fact relating to you

without attributing it to you as a person

and i always knew not to let anyone too close

not to give anyone too much

but a sting of indiscretions

during a long-abandoned attempt to connect

plagues me still

and i wish i could go back to those days

when those monsters only lived inside me

and were not me