Strawberry Season

Winter gives more than chill;
come his death every year,
resolves his guilt with some goodwill.
Gifting a treat to be reaped, rewarding
those who knew where to sow,
before the snow first fell.

Tips of bright crimson
cut by a deep shade of maroon
mired in pale white,
fistfuls of red rubies dotting
a faded field of spruce green.
Like jealous eyes crying bloody tears.

A dying Christmas canon.
The first Strawberry bushes
fleecing the melting frost.
Our swan song to the doomed season.

We spared none.
None but the sickly sweet scent
that stuck to the curtains
and hung in the air.
An awkward aroma now.

She left nothing.
Nothing but the pink prints,
stained on the paper plates
where the berries once sat.

Shaped like little lipstick-laced kisses,
on a old-timey handkerchief.
Thrown out of the moving ship,
carried by blue winds whispering blame,
landing in the hands of the abandoned.