Still colder, darker, longer nights. Yesterday I sleptwalked.

Finally I lay down and I dreamed of truelove. I dreamed that I was too broken to deserve her, but I put my feelings out anyway, and that she returned my smile all the way through, both of us.

Parental disapproval and moral misgivings of my own besides. Oh I was young and pretty in my way yet only a pollinator, only a moth before the nectar of her flower. Evolutionary.

No one deserves, least of all those who don’t put the signal, or can’t, or shouldn’t.

I am here. Down in the depths of the darkness and the cold.

I have taken steps to keep myself here and I have shunned taking steps that would get me out.

The furnace still works and I have my art to keep me warm. Sometimes that works.

A week until the solstice and it will be a good one of a different kind.