Memories of warmth
There’s an ache in the center of my breath,
a hollow that learned my name and never left.
Spring passed by without knocking—
afraid, perhaps, of what it would find.
Winter didn’t arrive.
It recognized me.
Laid its mouth against my pulse
and whispered, stay like this.
Now the cold remembers my shape.
It curls itself within and
sleeps where hope once rehearsed its return.
I do not mourn the warmth anymore.
I mourn the memory of believing it would come back.
And still
something in me listens
for footsteps in the snow.
