A December Apart
Last December,
we were a hearth,
embers blazing beneath a frozen sky.
Your breath was my language,
your heartbeat my compass—
each pulse a hymn to the warmth
we thought would outlast the cold.
But this December,
the silence stands between us
like a snow-laden tree.
I look for you in the shape of shadows,
in the way the wind bends
as if whispering your name—
and find nothing but the hollow echo of forgetting.
Do you remember the streetlamp glow
on that corner where we lingered,
hands trembling, not from the frost
but from the weight of our words?
Now the street is a stranger,
its light a foreign tongue.
Last December,
you called me by names
only the night could hear.
Now, the moon rises uninvited,
its cold eye watching
as we pass each other like ghosts,
the gravity between us undone.
Tell me,
does your breath still catch
when the first snow falls?
Do you trace the frost
like a map to the place
we lost ourselves?
For we were lovers once,
and now we are strangers.
And yet the seasons—
they betray us.
Each December,
the air carries your absence,
as if it never left.
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