The New Year

The weather was balmy, even though the sky was the pale grey of winter storms.  I shrugged myself into my suit jacket, stuck my tie into my pocket, and trudged down the street to where my car was parked.  The previous year hadn't been a failure, not quite, but in any event it was gone.

Christmas trees were already in front of houses.  On the curb of the street.  Lined up in the park, where person after person had taken one degenerate's lead.  Whether the city would pick them up or not didn't concern me, though I doubted it.  They would more than likely burn before then.

Nothing was really different, but I figured I would go on thinking that there was really a fresh start that day.  Things certainly had potential to play out better in the coming months...if I could get some money together.  Poverty had been an interesting experiment, but whatever I had to learn had probably presented itself after a year.

A week later he would fall in love, and the world seemed to really change a little.  He had changed.  Giddy, even to the point of being stupid...but I didn't blame him.  I envied him truly, because after so long he still had the heart to play the games of budding lovers.  I had run out of poetry that last night in Puerto Natales when the dueña of the corner shop had taken pity on me and sold me the beer even though I didn't have the empty bottle to trade.  I didn't know it then, but when I woke that next morning I had forgotten how to be a Romantic.

She wouldn't know any of that, and she still smiled at me from thousands of miles away, in the desert.  If I did go back...I would go back...

It would be cold again soon; the real cold.  It had been the coldest winter of my life when I first fell in love.  I didn't think it would be that cold again, and anyway it wouldn't mean as much.  Snow would be more of an inconvenience, because there would be no music in it.  I smile, still, thinking of Montreal and blizzards.  To me, that will always be a happy memory, and the only real Christmas I ever had.

Y así pasan los días, esperando.  Como siempre.  Para siempre.