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.