The First Winter

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