List of Memories There was a time when stillness meant nothing to me. Once silence meant lack of sound; Fall came once a year. I danced, redcheeked, each year's first snow, tongue out to taste each flake's welcome sting. I laughed, distinct from nature's cycles, a scrap of wonder floating in a torrent of sorrow I couldn't grasp. That laugh, mouth open, sums up my past. I craved fulfillment, to shallow to know I could never be fully filled. A sound associated with silence delicately etches the seconds as they fly past, snowflakes of lost bliss that drift into a list of memories. This white hush of rushing blood carves it seamless tears in blank empty spaces that echo silence where beginnings come to an end; I speak of the hissing silences of loss that trap hollowness in sound. This liquid whisper is the music of the realm I dwell in. It is the answer to all questions not said-- and so much has been left unexpressed. The certainties of yesterday twist like smoke into laughter. I am a shooting star-- whispering through the atmosphere; I am a snake-- slithering through the musty depths of yesterday's passions; I will answer those questions you never asked. Isn't there a future to dream about? In it fat snowflakes crash to the blacktop and perish, and vulcanized rubber rolls hissing through their remains. Then the air that stings exposed flesh, the damp, turgid suppression of sound absorbed and lost in the dingy snowdrifts. Memories refuse me a moment's quiet. You know the rest. You saw the pleasure sent scintillating through my nerves as passion eroded resolve, and I offered yourself to me in the twisted reason of convenience. The wordless joys you squeezed out without question blessed our pleasures then-- but when embers blink out, the darkness resumes. The rest is silence.