The Quiet Gathering
Call your family,
not out of obligation,
but because something in you
remembers their voices
before the years began to scatter them.
Let the line ring long enough
to feel the distance,
then soften
when it is finally bridged.
Help decorate the tree,
not for how it will look,
but for the small and sacred ritual
of placing each memory
back where it belongs.
The ornaments will know your hands.
They always have.
Remember what it means to you,
not what was told,
but what was felt
in the quiet glow of it all.
Outside, the snow is falling,
as it always seems to
when the world is trying
to hush itself into stillness.
Tell the stories
that have outlived their years,
the ones passed down
in fragments and laughter,
in voices that grow softer
with time.
Hold them gently.
They are more fragile than they seem.
And when the night leans toward ending,
when the year loosens its final breath,
keep something.
A card, a word, a moment
pressed carefully into memory.
For these are the things
that remain
when the season has passed,
the quiet evidence
that we were here,
together.
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