The Devil in December

In the frost-laden hush of the year’s last breath,

he arrives, a man-shaped shadow

wrapped in velvet and smoke,

eyes like embers smoldering beneath winter's veil.

The air turns molten where he stands,

his heat a heresy against December’s chill.

He speaks, and the words don’t matter—

only the cadence,

a low tremor rolling through the hollows of my chest,

a hymn forbidden but irresistible,

the kind that makes saints lose their faith.

Touch becomes theology.

Fingers trace my collarbone,

and it feels like the first act of creation—

or maybe the last.

His breath on my neck

is a benediction I don’t deserve,

but I kneel before it anyway.

This is not love.

It is sacrifice,

a ritual of skin on skin,

of limbs tangled like roots desperate for the same soil.

I am a temple collapsing,

each shiver a crack in my foundation,

each gasp the sound of surrender.

In the mirror, I catch a glimpse

of myself as he sees me:

a woman unmade,

a sinner baptized in sweat,

with his name a prayer I choke on but can’t stop saying.

He doesn’t ask for my soul.

That would be too simple.

Instead, he takes my reason,

my resolve,

every sharp edge that made me whole.

I give them willingly.

When it’s over,

he kisses me,

and it feels like absolution—

except I know the truth:

there’s no forgiveness here.

Only fire.

I lie awake in the amber glow of his body,

thinking of the snow outside,

how it melts under his weight

and refreezes in jagged shapes.

The Devil in December isn’t a man at all.

He is a reckoning.

And I am his altar.