I was in the winter of my life; the folk I met along the road were my alone-born summer.

At dusk I sank into sleep with visions: myself in reckless dance, in laughter, in ruinous crying,

their faces like lanterns hauled through fog — tender torches that lit the hollows.

My memories of them kept the hearth alight; they were the only music in that long, pale house,

the only season I could name as real. When the moon leaned close I would hold each remembered hand

as if it might not vanish by dawn, and in my palms their warmth felt like a fragile law.

Once I dreamed of being a poet crowned in beauty — lines like silver on a priestess’ tongue.

Then fate, an unkind hand, scattered that kingdom: the dream cleaved and flung apart,

a thousand broken stars I kept wishing on until my fingers bled with wanting.

They glittered and hurt, each shard a small cathedral of might-have-been.

I came to learn that true freedom lives in the taking and the losing both:

to drink the whole bright cup, then see it shattered at your feet, and stand unbowed.

So now I walk beneath leafless trees, the year’s last birds gone, my breath a slow pale bell,

and treasure what remains — the fierce soft company of memory, the hard, sweet light of having loved.

A coolness threads the city — a thin, deliberate sigh.

Pages close with the soft grief of small ceremonies.

I drift through bookshop aisles, fingertips reading other people’s afternoons,

then sit beneath a cafe lamp where steam composes late prayers.

Autumn arranges itself in leaves like quiet decisions;

the sea keeps its slow punctuation, the forest counts light on lichen.

I take short disappearances: a train, a bench, a notebook,

melancholy softened by the hush of ordinary pilgrimage.

If endings are harvests, let me gather them gently —

tea, a finished page, the practice of returning.

Lived through a thousand moons, I learn the grace

of carrying what matters and leaving the rest to fall.