I am weary.
My hands ache from the frigid touch of the winter winds, and my boots have worn thin from my unwanted travels.
I did not choose to set out on this path.

Nor do I, in any significant way, choose to continue it.
It is a strange beast, this path, unknowable and yet so awfully, awfully known.
I remember every jagged rock, every ditch in the drought-ravaged soil.
And when I tell myself that I know this path, it shows me that I do not.

My pack is heavy.
It weighs me down, full of everything I wish I could forget.
There is a crucifix in it, resting by a bloody razor.
They sit on top of an unaddressed, unsent letter to a dear childhood friend.

I am alone.
I do not think I always was.
In fact, as I glance behind me, I see another set of footprints left in the dry sand.
But they have left me.
Or I have left them.

I tire of trying to remember.

I tire of walking, and walking, and walking through icy rain and warm tears.
I am weary.
And, upon occasion, I have considered stopping in my travels.

There is such a lovely, simple allure in the simplicity of darkness, in the ease of sleep.
I am well enough familiar with the means to gain that rest.
But in that blessed respite, there is a finality I find myself uncomfortable with.

I am weary.
And I am frightened.
And it is easier, somehow, despite the path's cold misery, to continue walking it.
Perhaps that makes me a coward.

But even as I take every deplorable step of my tepid travel, I know that I walk towards a finality earned.
A finality that does not require a note by an empty corpse.

I find that finality a much more attractive prospect.