as winter comes

There are prints of flowers and leaves on a wall that has forgotten
spring.

There are hands that hold these feelings inside of rushed 2 am
confessions, that come to nothing, and children's names that go with us
to our graves.

There is more of emptiness than anything else.

And no matter how you place your hands, or how tightly your fingers
curl around the flesh of your stomach

there will always be this distance.

In it, we will place the things that have fallen out of our
reach.

Your stories of 1939, that were never true even if they made us
smile. Crisp white table cloths and wine red napkins. Conversations
under shadowed wisps of strings that pull, over the clink of near-empty
glasses of chardonnay.

No, we will forget.

We will forget what it felt like to hold summer in our bellies.

And we will be empty inside.