The streetlights hum in the cold,
casting their pale halos
over the frozen world.
I walk past houses
where laughter leaks through the walls,
the kind I remember
but no longer know.
Each window is a postcard—
a tree dressed in lights,
a table spread with warmth.
Inside, a child leans close to a candle,
his face lit by something
I can’t name anymore.
The snow falls in whispers,
covering the broken sidewalk,
the withered garden,
my tracks dissolving as I move forward,
a ghost in my own skin.
The church doors are open.
I step inside and sit
beneath the towering shadow of the cross.
The pew is hard,
but the silence is soft.
Somewhere, a woman sings
of peace on Earth,
her voice wrapping itself
around the hollow ribs of the night.
I think of the star,
how it hung alone in the sky,
how it guided the lost
to something they could not understand,
but followed anyway.
This, too, is a kind of prayer:
to sit in the stillness,
to let the cold cradle my hands
as if the world itself
were waiting
to forgive me.
Outside, the snow keeps falling,
soft as breath,
quiet as grace.