I walked outside as the temperature and the hibernal sun sunk slowly, as though weary and gravid, but putting up one last feeble protestation.

The chill struck my face, biting it so abruptly, that my eyes winced and watered in irrepressible protest. As I walked further down the sidewalk, I noticed other people quickening their pace, pulling up their collars, with their faces turned down, moving towards their destination with such sudden purpose; as I had not yet determined mine, I move slowly between them. The distant thrum of foreboding behind my consciousness became audible, or was it the wind and the sighs and the breaths of all the people rushing by? It made insistent shimmering pangs that I could nearly see. Or perhaps it was my eyes blurring at the wind's sting and the incipient stream of unwilled tears threatening to spill from my eyes.

Like the rest of them, I turned up my collar, but the wind would still not spare my eyes. I walked forward into the dusk and the shrinking shapes of shadows, as the sun disappeared. I no longer knew where I was going. I did not know where they were going, but I doubled my pace to join them. Swiftly I folded into the fatigued mass clipping forward. My mind's eye folding its lid against my awareness.

I no longer wished to be among them...

With bated breath to chase the anamnesis,
Far beyond the palpable senses;
The warmth of sweat and tears born of Fear,
Run down my cold, exhausted face;
Digging in the harsh sands of time,
Clawing at the Tree of Life.
Eliding cries, the deafening pangs,
Into a crash of silence.

Trembling limp towards the past,
Hesitant strides approach,
The hiemal future ahead.
Steps of uncertainty lit,
In the gloaming of Autumn,
And it' final days.