The Chill of December

(A raven’s shadow falls across the page. A quill scratches furiously, punctuated by heavy sighs.) December… a month draped in the funereal crepe of the dying year. Darkness descends with a swift, predatory grace, the sun a feeble ember choked by the ashen sky. I find a certain… solace in this gloom. A kinship with the spectral trees, their branches like skeletal fingers reaching for a forgotten heaven. Endings. Yes, the year’s final breath. The last, ghastly tick of the clock before the abyss of a new annum yawns before us. A necessary horror, this yearly demise. A reminder of our own inevitable descent into the cold, silent earth. Chill. A bone-deep, marrow-freezing chill that seeps into the very soul. Winter’s icy grip tightening upon the land. I detest it. This stark, unforgiving season that mirrors the barren landscape of my own heart. Even so… I would alter nothing. For within this desolation, there is a certain… ghastly beauty. A stark poetry etched in frost upon the windowpane. A reflection of the darkness that dwells within us all. Memories, like specters, haunt this month. The forced gaiety of Christmas, a hollow echo in the desolate air. The flickering lights of Hanukkah, a fragile defiance against the encroaching night. Even Kwanzaa’s communal warmth cannot fully dispel the pervasive gloom. Before it was December, it was decem—ten. A phantom limb of a forgotten calendar, a ghostly reminder of time’s capricious nature. A trick of the light, a phantom of the past. Each year, a flicker of… something. Not hope, precisely. Perhaps a morbid curiosity to witness the year’s final, shuddering breath. A premonition of what awaits us all. Restlessness. A gnawing unease that settles in the bones, a presentiment of some impending doom. This month… this cursed month… the month of my deepest anxieties. The month of my birth. (A long, drawn-out sigh, like the wind whistling through a broken window.) To be born in December… it is to be born into the heart of darkness. To be forever marked by the chill of the dying year. To carry within oneself a constant awareness of mortality. The forced merriment of the season only serves to amplify the inherent melancholy. A cruel jest played upon the newly born. (A bitter laugh, a sound like dry leaves skittering across a tombstone.) Secrets… yes, many secrets are whispered on the winds of December. Fears, like ravens, perch upon the branches of the soul. Joys… fleeting, ephemeral things, like snowflakes melting on a warm hand. Prayers… desperate pleas cast into the uncaring void. (The quill scratches one final, frantic line.) A breath of light… a flickering candle in the vast, starless night. This is my birth. A shadow cast by the dying year. A poem etched in the frost of December, a tale told in whispers from the grave. A light, perhaps, only visible to those who dwell in the deepest darkness.