I walk through a silent, white world of falling snow, the sky gray and sunless and the color of slate. I’m cold, and in the stillness I pause before a fork in a road almost invisible beneath the blanket of a blizzard.

There’s a little time left, I guess, to turn around. It doesn’t have to end like this, shouldn’t really.

Thing is, I’ve followed this path for long miles, and though at the crossroads one may question the wisdom…the worth…the meaning of it all…I’ve passed the proverbial point of no return. My star has set. I’ve padded past the proverbial meridian, gone further than maybe I should have, and now a castle of mirrors whose tower tops are lost in the brooding, blank clouds of winter looms before me and casts a very long shadow.

What happens now? I don’t know. It’s kind of like a mangled schoolbus, a demon clown holding court in some fetid, stinking sewer desmense, a blood soaked glove or an unidentified bone in a deep ditch. It’s a dark and depressing puzzle, an invitation of sorts into the kinds of mysteries that make me want to stop breathing.

Guess I’ll let it all ride. For now. I’ve got booze, lots of booze, and when I’m drunk I can’t feel the razor of the past or the cuts that past will carve into my future. When I’m drunk there’s only the present, the purity of today, and by whatever divine powers you might believe in I believe that’s enough. Watching the sun rise and the sun set is something no one should ever take for granted.

I hate words, always will. They’re slippery, as slimy as slugs or even worse the eels that shock. They leave a tingling emptiness, a hollow hate, a certainty that ever and always they could have been used better, been more poignant. They are the worst broken promise, for they promise you don’t have to be alone if you could only find the right sequence.

You have a better chance winning big in the lottery than winning with them, even once. Every truth they tell leads to a thousand lies.