Changing Season

Snowfall is an excellent conductor
for a loose assertion of pledges.
You promise to salt the icy spots tomorrow,
and patch the leaks in the roof
when spring comes. Counterfeit reformation
layers the canvas; anywhere you stick
that pin the sad truth will be revealed.
Your inability to sign your name
on that mess scents your need for anonymity
with the suspicion that you’re purposefully
hindering this construction. Defensive reactions
are shoved to the side of the path,
but don’t melt. When you say rules will hurt,
you are already calculating all the times you’ll
want to break them, creating a snowscape
of the future with brush and blade.
Your stranded buckets of strategy and resolve,
strategy and resolve, strategy and resolve
accumulate in the garage, or the basement,
all the cold, dark places that disguise them
as pockets of shadow, like black ice, trip me
in the dark, and leave me injured. You say
these frosted windows are unjust. They don’t show
you clearly, and only lend to my double standards,
ranking, constant judging, and nagging. They perpetuate
my tendency to expect the worst, driving
white-knuckled through this relationship.
You deny the slippery recklessness of your
unreliability. So, I know you can’t and won’t fix it.