As I Got Older

As I Got Older

As I got older, the cold learned my name,

it followed me through bare trees and shortened days,

settled into my bones like it had always lived there,

patient, familiar, never in a hurry to leave.

The world began to look like winter even in light,

branches stripped of stories, standing honest and thin,

the sky offering colour without warmth,

as if beauty itself had learned restraint.

Family became echoes carried by frost,

their laughter trapped in older seasons,

I walk past where they once stood,

and the ground remembers more than I do.

Time moves like water through a narrow stream,

quiet, unstoppable, reflecting what is above it,

I watch my face ripple and break,

then pull itself back together again.

Loneliness does not shout in places like this,

it waits among the trees,

breathing with the earth,

letting silence finish every sentence.

I have learned how absence can be heavy,

how it presses down harder than grief,

how love can remain without touch,

and still ache when the day grows dim.

As I got older, I stopped asking for spring,

I learned how to stand inside the cold,

holding memories like small fires,

careful not to let the wind take them.

There is a strength in surviving these seasons,

in walking paths that lead only forward,

even when the light feels distant,

even when I walk alone.