hideout (II)

there, right there, a snake woke from its winter slumber and sneaked out to hear us as we sat by the stones near her lair. there was a faint promise of love then; one never fulfulled, for life has driven us apart before we could even start to understand the feeling. and the promise still lies by the moss-covered stones, by the falling cold water. perhaps one day we might sit there again, by the same stone that has probably sheltered so many lovers throughout the ages. perhaps in that day the snake, the same snake, will come out again, and dance for us at the rhythm of the falling water. and perhaps then we will walk away from the fear that blinded us once, but we cannot say. how i long for those days, though. we had so much to give to each other; and as it seems, we have spent those gifts in unworthy endeavours. everything could have been so different. perhaps you would have been powerful enough to keep my own private hell locked beneath the earth. perhaps with you the blossoms would still welcome the winter sun. or perhaps the winter itself would have never come, and we would have remained oblivious to cold and rain in an endless spring. who can say it now, after so long? now, that the clouds have come never to leave? now, when all the memories of the places that were once ours are overwritten by by memories that shall bring us no joy or warmth again? even our hideout by the stones and the falling water reminds me of other moments, of other people; and even though our presence is still there, something else haunts the place. the trees are different. the water sometimes sounds almost like a lament. the light seems pale, and the mists from the mountain above remind me of spectres of ages long past. and the cold is no longer comfortable, inviting me to wrap you in my warm embrace; it carries a scent of decay. whether we are still able to heal that world remains yet to be seen, but these dark days are not meant for hope. they are not meant for anything, as a matter of fact.