November quivers each time it is destined to leave my threshold. Decembers enters my doorway, dark, deep and somber. It has been such for the last 12 years. I do not wish to reveal the details of the somberness of December through my writings. She has her own coquettish moods that are difficult to decipher. She carries both light and shadows upon her countenance. Both black and white. At times she is sinister and at times rather bland with the pale light of the winter sky pasting itself to her visage like an old crumpled veil.
I do not question December. I do not speak to her. For the last 12 years I have simply watched her. Watched her descend into my life each year, Watched her pull the curtains around me and seclude me from the rest of the world. Watched her revive old memories and nightmares that I had tucked away deep beneath the bedclothes of my decade old mind. I have watched and waited with a crooked smile fluttering across my vapid face. Like a butterfly on the wing…trying its best to brush away shades of a dismal winter from its otherwise vibrant body.
Thus, we do not speak. December and I. We merely pass each other by. Like strangers, like old disenchanted neighbors, like two introverts caught up amidst this quagmire called life.
December and I….
Beautiful writing; it’s so picturesque. In a way, it saddens me that the arrival of December congers up bad/sad memories for you. December has always had the opposite effect of me, growing up in Ontario, Canada. I learned to skate almost as quickly as walk and so I spent many moon-lit nights gliding across the frozen pond near my home, guided by its silvery light and the distant stars. My older sister pulled the sled with me in it to fetch our Christmas tree while Mom strung popcorn at home to grace the tree’s branches. You get the idea: Christmas, hockey, skating, snowmen, school holidays meant that December was a welcome arrival from November. It’s interesting to me how we all arrive at such different feelings relating to something like your subject matter. Best wishes to you.
I can understand. December means happiness to most people. Sadly, I lost my father in December.