You keep finding that perfume—
the one your grandma used to wear,
a lavender mist mixed with old stories,
and you breathe it in
just to feel her arms wrap around you again.

You crave the ice scramble
from the street vendor who’s long been gone,
its sweet, gritty chill on your tongue,
a taste of afternoons when the world
was small enough to hold in your palm.

All year, you've been waiting for Christmas,
but when it comes, the magic doesn’t.
The lights blink, the carols play,
but there’s a hollow echo where joy once lived.
You’re longing for Christmas
from two decades back—
when your grandparents were still at the table,
their laughter rich and familiar,
when all your siblings and parents filled the rooms
of that worn-out house that seemed so grand
because everyone you loved was inside it.

You're chasing the ghosts of simpler days,
grasping for shadows cast by a sun long set,
and in your prayers, you ask
for a future that feels like a distant past—
a time untouched by loss,
where every scent and taste
could bring you home again.

But time is a wind, fierce and unyielding,
it sweeps away the fragile things
we want so desperately to hold.
And still, you reach into its emptiness,
searching for what once was,
a fragment of warmth in the cold.

© reddragonfly