Road to December

On a moonless night

My heart frozen five months under the stars

We rounded the corner

Drove head on into the sky

 and I was taken by the memory 

 of that fateful December night.

I had forgotten how that highway looked-

 limitless, without end or sorrow

 That road that led to that door that night-

Layered in snow- in bad accumulation of element

Was now smooth and black on a late May night.

Suddenly and mindlessly you turned

 and that image, that memory, my December

 was lost once again.

As we edged back toward town

Following those old gritty lights

Following all the wrong signs leading to despair-

 to one solitary desperation- the place I'd come to know as home-

I couldn't look back.

How could I face that road, those stars, that face of heaven

Seized by the nostalgia of that last season

Which for one moment had granted me a pass back into time.

I witnessed that road again, covered in snow

I saw the stilled stars winter alignment

 and I sensed that anticipation I had felt  

 in that December haze...

And I knew then that he'd always known

That every sight and sound

Every breath I drew hereafter 

Would be death to my blood- He knew.

He'd been before where I'd feared to tread.

 and I knew then that what had been lost had been lost forever.

And a road to another December existed no more.