Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the ship, only
what I'm doing with them.

<fortuita@hotmail.com> for feedback

A Hope in Winter
By Fortuita James

Now that the nights are chill
And the annuals spent,
I should have thought them gone,
In a torpor of blood
Slipped to the nether world
Before the sickle frost.
Not so.
	From The Snakes of September, Stanley Kunitz

Almost, I pause outside your room. You wouldn't welcome me, though 
any other troubled crewmember might find solace with you. But my 
pain you deny, can't understand.
  So I have to walk past, can't hope your banishing presence will 
dispatch my ghosts. With no glance over my shoulder, I can still 
imagine a thousand ways to turn back. None of them are hopeful enough 
to sway my feet.
  My cold quarters are my only welcome. The already failed hope my 
mind will freeze, its iciness holding back the dreams. Already failed.
  I move lightly to Harry's night terrors, grin my way through the 
day. See long faces comforted by friends. 
  I could wear my past on my face. Turn myself inside out. They'd say,
'Talk to someone, let it out'. 
  And I would, if only you would listen.

***