Sweet Melancholy

The sunny days are gone,

the ones that held us close.

A little light stays on the walls,

like a hand that won’t let go.

The day gets short and thin,

the evening comes in quiet.

Something’s changing out there,

and something moves inside.

I don’t know what it is,

if it’s missing, or if it’s true.

A voice coming back from far away,

or a part of me still waiting on you.

There’s something in the air

I can’t put into words.

It’s all the things I started

and never quite finished.

The names and the quiet,

the promises we made,

the roads I never took,

the doors I left that way.

And while the world turns color,

I stop and look around.

Maybe I, like the trees,

have to learn to lay it down.

Some friends are still back there,

in a time we couldn’t keep.

Words left hanging on goodbye,

questions I was scared to speak.

And dreams I shut in a drawer

come knocking, soft and slow,

like the wind through the branches

bringing back what I let go.

I fold myself into the quiet,

the way the ground does before sleep.

Maybe not everything that ends

is something we have to leave.

There’s something in the air,

and I’m trying now to hear.

It isn’t only the past.

It isn’t only the fear.

It’s life, the way it changes,

asking me to wait,

to let the time go by

and still keep the dream awake.

And while the trees lose color,

and everything goes still,

maybe I, in the quiet,

am learning how to begin.

There’s something in the air…

I don’t have to explain.

Even the heart, sometimes,

needs a season

to learn how to change.