The Night Time Stood Still

As the sun began to set, cursed words smeared the screen A familiar face vanished everywhere I once loathed to see it It was a heady rush I never dreamed of experiencing The taste of iron on my tongue sent my head spinning Thus began the longest night From mid-November til late December I cannot remember the moments where the sun lit the sky Just the quiet nights alone in my apartment Crafting the finales that would lead me to victory scholastically Huddled under the Lecture Hall in the center of campus while snow fell Typing out promises to viewers and singing to myself Songs of victory and solitude, whether good or bad A dream I had for a decade finally rested in my palms Perhaps the most disappointing moment I can recall But I let the myriad hours slip away As the night went on and so did I I came face to face with a concept I'd fetishized for a third of my life Spilling every revelation I had onto twenty sheets of paper for a grade Coming up with new ones as I wrote and couldn't stop writing All for a man who could read it, but would never choose to understand I told that man and every other classmate about my dream of night and snow Hands outstretched, snowflakes encasing them as I reached to a streetlight As the happiest moment I could ever recall And that much is true, it was a turning point I'd never forget And yet this month of eternal night rings equally as strongly A faceless man once told me "December is the coldest and darkest month of the year." And that much was true, as I let who I was die in a snowstorm My mental paradigms rapidly shifted immediately after the semester ended It was solely that month that I hold so near and dear to my heart Riding high on conflicting emotion, of being freed from an abusive relationship And being completely alone for the first time in half a decade I shed my past crutches and chains and shakily stepped forward 2016 was a year that hurt so much, yet I'll always treasure beyond compare The lessons learned in that Year of Survival will haunt me forever And yet they have blessed me with so much more And that silent night that time stood still That single month where I was no longer afraid to move forward Will forever hold its grip on my heart As the Dream of Night and Snow once did As the Memories of Golden Twilight still do As the latest major plot point in the book that is my existence.