silent night

It's sway is fierce tonight. The lingering snow lets nothing escape, but it's the frigid air that hushes us.

You've carved a hungry space in me but a wind forces a silence and freezes words to our tongues.

Is that hollow a wound? A home for what we haven't said?

When we rejoin the others to fill our lungs with brighter, civil air you speak openly, laugh; I shudder at the memory of that cold, almost warmed-through.

Yet the sound it has stolen is never heard, and my voice never warms to you. My emptiness is never made whole.