Cold comes in

Swept from who knows where

Touches everything with stillness

Sound pulls back

Sheets of silence fill the empty

Hush hush - the sky's singular blue note

Branches quiver

Folios shiver lapping-up sunshine

Wind wraps around bundled bones clenching

Gut grinds

Heartbeats rapidly - ruminating

Inhaling the taste of season's sudden shift

Shadows deliriously dance through side window

Walls animated with jagged-edged silhouettes

Leafs retracting against chilly sunbeams

Pulsing this way and that way

Tempted to fall

Overlapping shadow upon shadow

Singularly, I lay

Covers pulled high

Wistfully longing

Reunions drift farther and farther apart

Clouds dissolving

Languishing

Teasing out amorphous impulses

I close my eyes

Daydreams turn to Mourning-dreams

Touch memories

Remember the missing

Translucent sleep forgot to wake

Spooning pillows in your place

I glance the sleepless side - hollow

Carved wood

Wet earth

Sleep's sweat-scent of two become one - gone

Nearness nevermore

Empty unknown growing

Ready for take-off

But as usual, underdressed for winter.