Winter Silence

The snow erases edges, white swallows every boundary— a cardinal cuts through, blood-bright against forgetting.

Frost spiders spin between bare branches, each strand catches what little light remains. The world gets smaller in cold. Breath becomes visible, then gone.

In this quiet, I hear the sound of water freezing, the settling of old wood, footprints filling before they're even made.

There's a language here I'm learning with my body— how to be still enough to taste the air's secrets.