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This is my first Christmas

without your name wrapped around mine,

without your voice

calling me Babygirl

like it was a promise and not a season.

The tree is up,

but something in me is bare.

Lights blink on and off,

practicing joy

I haven’t agreed to yet.

Last year,

I was counting ornaments

while you were counting lies.

I didn’t know it then

how December had already chosen

to break me later.

You were warm with me,

gentle, familiar, convincing.

And somewhere between carols and kisses,

you were learning someone else’s laugh,

planting seeds in a month

meant for devotion.

I replay it now

how real it felt.

How safe I was allowed to believe.

How I held your words

like they couldn’t expire.

This year,

I unwrap memories instead of gifts.

Some still smell like you.

Some finally smell like truth.

I don’t miss the man you became.

I miss the version of you

I thought was choosing me

when he was already leaving.

Still,

I am here.

Breathing through the ache.

Learning that endings don’t cancel

the love I gave honestly.

If Christmas is about birth,

then let this be mine.

Not into joy yet

but into clarity.

Into a quieter kind of peace.

And maybe that’s enough

for now.