David Widup

STORIES

I returned to the world
and to a small barracks room that
looked out onto a parking lot
and a long row of concrete buildings.
They were gray-the sky in Wyoming
was gray, a gray, snow-filled winter.
Sometimes snow drifts covered all the cars.
I didn't care--I had no place to go.

I'm sure it was a Saturday
when I got out of bed and drank several cups of tea,
alone on my military cot.
It had been snowing for hours.
The space between the barracks filled in,
smooth and rounded, with not a scar anywhere.
I imagined this small space a huge open field,
covered with crystal-laden snow still falling in big flakes.
How hard it must have been to live here, I thought,
one hundred years before, cold, harsh and gray.

I read, smoked and drank more tea
before writing her that letter never sent.
I wrote of my imaginary fields of snow,
of how I walked in them,
caught snowflakes on my tongue
as tears froze on my cheeks.
How my footsteps were the only ones
as they made a path from me to her
laid by old combat boots in the knee-deep snow.
I imagined the stories in that field,
unhappy stories without endings,
about why she left,
and those stories
were etched in every snowflake
that I caught.
The ones that escaped my tongue,
well--they were the ones that held all the answers.