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As I lock the door behind me,
the brisk air rushes to greet me,
a breathless messenger of winter’s transition to spring.
Moonlight spills over the drive as I turn left,
guided not by the path,
but by the stars waiting to pull me forward.

I began to count—
the day’s fleeting laughter,
the week’s meandering moments,
the month’s hours dancing by like leaves on the wind.
Am I ready yet?
Or am I still waiting?

The baby turns fifteen next month.
The firstborn, twenty-one in weeks.
My sister, forty this summer.
My nose stings with cold as it settles in:
not the kind of growing older that startles you,
but the kind that murmurs quietly,
“The world is moving forward, with or without you.”

A farm across the street,
its fields now replaced by luxury condos.
The streetlights spilling their pale orange glow,
unnoticed before tonight.
Even the air feels older,
its chill sharper than memory.

And I wonder:
did they feel this too?
My second-grade teacher,
watching me walk away on the last day of school?
The cool older cousin who realized, one summer,
that I had reached her age
when she used to braid my hair?
The woman who moved into her childhood home,
watching her roots stretch into something unrecognizable?

The businessman—single now,
city-bound,
his sports car traded for a guitar in some forgotten band—
did the chill surprise him too, as it does me now?

The moon casts its glow across a sky,
clear and alive,
the stars quieter than usual,
like whispers biding their time.

It kisses me goodnight as I unlock the door ahead,
the familiar cold now folded into me,
its embrace a welcome thing.
I step into warmth,
the stars trailing behind like threads,
pulling me gently toward this newness,
this place I now belong.