Come Clean

There aren't enough words anymore.

This house is structured to keep me safe, to carry me through the winter and on to sunny mornings where green enfolds from fickle black branches and introduces a realm of contentment and satisfaction. The wind grew sharper today, a sting to the skin that made wonder how the same sun can cry but a separate warmth translate down. The house was cold, inside, an occurrence I had never encountered. Perhaps a window was left ajar, perhaps the heater stopped early.

They're stripping at the paint, these feeble hands of winter's wind. Tenements of color flaking down and away, the earth of timber cut for structure seeping through like death. I feel it like fingernails through clay--penetrating, obtrusive, ruining. Troughs of failure etch these walls. 

I sit against the window's glass.

There aren't enough words anymore.

The hostage situation of my mind is irritable at best. I attribute it to the feeble working of my energy reserve, and the incapatability of sleep with my being's psyche. But another thought swims within the slough: I am too far idle. I am too far driven down a path I never intended to tread, standing facing where I've been, bombarded with slurs and slays of traitor, deviant, Judas. He was at AMDA at this age. He had an agent, on the brink of getting a stable role in television. He had published his first novel.

Interesting that all my goals were set by men.

The feminists in the room recoil and hiss.

I press on, lightly informing them that 'hiss' is his. 

There aren't enough words anymore.

Thou shalt not idle away thy time, neither shalt thou bury thy talent that it may not be known.*

There aren't enough words anymore.

I have failed to keep them.

The glass folds upon itself with the molten age of years gone in days. The trees beyond are fogged by the pane; black is all remains. Green is absent yet.

Winter became custom here, for never was another embraced. Never was a season given such light, such warmth, as the cold.

I have failed to keep them.

It takes me fragments of breath to settle the voices of accusation, to remind them our AMDA, our television role, our first novel will come when these years are tucked in memory. We will have time, the air mutters as I press it through my lungs and out parted lips. 

The breath neglects to tell me I have dwindling supply of ability.

I have failed to keep them.

"You fear the world too much," she answered, gently. "All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one..."**

I have failed to keep them. 

There aren't enough words anymore.

*Doctrine and Covenants 60:13

**A Christmas Carol-Dickens (Scrooge's first fiance, as seen with the Ghost of Christmas Past)