Ludibrium

The foot prints were yours under the freshly shoveled snow.
You'd been here last night.
You're still here
breath breathing down my neck
a face in the tightly held snow on the smoke bush
unfamiliar but there.

It's getting warm out
thirty nine degrees in fact
humid air dense as it can be
and here I am
to sink down with these

a shovel, a vest, a trapper hat

inside,
one lantern light
dimmer and dimmer
no flint left to spark
houses of black among
a cool white blanket of December
I can't help it, having these memories
ones I've tried to efface
I don't know what I know
only that the face had to be yours
in this bumfuck, out of the way place.
Goddamn me

Goddamn I

Goddamn you
gone from my life
yet that will never be true.