It's gonna get colder when you leave.
The ground will harden
And the trees will sleep
And the world
Will wait.
Underneath the snow,
Life
Will wait.
The wind will search for you in every face
Biting and frantic
But find nothing,
And in despair crack across the ground like a whip
Stirring up little ghostly eddies of ice crystals.
The snow will catch the branches and drag them down
Asking
Why the silence,
This year?
None of that summertime laughter
To light up the ice and make it sparkle.
The days will pull darkness around them like a thick coat
And slink by
In a hurry to be elsewhere,
Still too long, and too strange.

And then
Just when we've all almost given up,
Winter will soften, just a bit.
The rains will come, like a good cry you've been holding your breath against
For months,
And the snow will wash away
And the ground will be ugly and scarred,
But bare at last,
And the land will begin
Slowly
To bloom
In anticipation of your footsteps there.

The sun will hold its line in the battle against the night
For just a sliver longer every day.
The first flowers will shoot up through
The last little patches of snow,
Light green and fragile.
The world will wake
Yawn and stretch,
Is she back yet?
Is she here?
The cherry blossoms on the tree in my backyard will unfurl
White and delicate and frothy on tough, leathery branches
And we will all see that maybe
Everything is going to be alright
After all.

Is she back yet?
Is she here?
And summer will stroll in, laughing,
The moment you set foot on this soil again.