The First Winter

This offering comes from the very beginning, before memory and before story. It speaks to the moment when something familiar disappears, long before we have language for loss. For me, it was my first winter, the first sense of absence, the first ache I carried without understanding why.

Many of us have known a loneliness we couldn’t explain. A quiet heaviness in the chest. An early sense that something was missing before we knew what we were missing. This piece is a doorway into that place. It is for anyone who has ever felt outside of belonging, anyone who carries a wound they learned to live around.

If you’ve ever lived with a feeling you couldn’t name, or a longing you couldn’t place, this is for you.

Transcript

Before I took my first breath There was only one voice The one I knew better than my own heartbeat That voice was my sky My weather My everything Sound drifting through water Rhythm pressed into my forming bones A lullaby I never had to learn Because it lived inside me Then I arrived Into a world where everything familiar Fell away The voice I knew Disappeared The heartbeat I slept beside Vanished The scent,

The warmth The home inside a body Was gone Love doesn't always get to stay The way it wishes it could The rhythm that carried me Slipped into silence And before I had a name for anything I learned the shape of absence I don't remember the story With my mind But my body remembers It remembers a sudden cold It remembers searching for a heartbeat That wasn't there It remembers being new And already alone I grew up with a feeling I couldn't name A sense of standing just outside the circle A quiet ache for arms That never held me An old winter living in my chest And sometimes I still feel it That first winter That loneliness That longing to belong somewhere

Reviews

This piece took me to that place where I could cry out and not be heard. It would be great if you would expand on the topic. Your presentation style invited me to walk with you rather than just listen. I look forward to more.

Amen dear one 💕💕 beautiful words pointing towards an unnameable place that is always here.

That was so powerful and beautiful. That is just how my souls feels. Thank you!