I Knew Right Then You Would Break My Dirty Heart

It's my blood and I will do with it as I wish. I will keep it all trapped and sloshing in bottles on the shelf if I want to. I'll drip it down your throat while you sleep tonight. I'll infect you with myself. I'll be under your skin, digging in, digging down. I'll make you hate me and forget me at the same time. I'll refuse to exist.

And suddenly, the Fall is calling my name. She says the Summer was all a dream my fevered mind was never willing to accept. "Did you ever really think he was falling in love with you? Did you ever really think that warm skin could touch your coldness, your ice exterior and not be repelled? What were you thinking girl? Were you thinking you could be happy... here... for just a moment? Stop deceiving yourself and come home." She touches the leaves of my tomato plants and they shrivel brown shivering in the damp air. The stalks wilt and the fruit rots. She turns her grey eyes to me and kisses my cheek. She rains down on me running her wet fingers through my hair. Come home, she says, come home.

And the blood is running down my thighs past my knees and pooling at my ankles. It's filling up my mouth and when I part my lips I can only speak in burbles and spit the ground all red. The dirt drinks me deep filling up the cracks in the landscape. The Fall calls me Rain taking my hand to lead me to soft Winter who has been waiting for me all year. Winter takes my precious bottles of blood and kisses them until ice crystals dance like tiny ballerinas against the glass. The Winter calls me Snow and I jump sending tiny droplets into air. He catches my hair in his fingers and smiles. He leaves trails of ice down my cheeks with his trembling hands kissing me until I can see my warm breath vaporizing to mingle with the mist. Come home, he says, come home now.

And you might wake up tomorrow with the strange taste of blood in your throat and wonder where the summer went. You might wonder about the cold place next to you and the strange perfume upon your pillows. You might bury your head in your arms and remember unusually cool skin on a hot summer night curled against you whispering something that sounded like a dirty confession of love. You might think you remember me but I've gone home with my dirty heart to the clean white snows of Winter's hands and the gentle caresses of Fall's windy tongue to calm myself of your summery lies, heated hands and golden skin.

I've gone home to my kingdom of ice and you can forget me now with this season that will always keep us apart.