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It’s always easiest in the winter.

The cold stiffens things. Numbs the soft tissue. Makes it easier to pack her away into that special box we build for the things that make us uncomfortable. Regret. Longing. Questions with no return address.

In the summer everything breathes too loud. In the winter, silence feels honest.

I sit here with damp cheeks.

The voices arrive like they always do.

“What kind of man are you? Pull yourself together.”

They mean well. Or they think they do. There’s always a script for men. Be steady. Be solid. Don’t leak.

It would be easier if I had done something obvious. Something unforgivable. Something I could circle in red ink and confess to. At least then the ending would have structure. A cause. A clean narrative.

But ambiguity lingers like breath in cold air.

For weeks I told myself she never really saw me. That I stood there open and she looked past me. It preserved something in me to believe that. Made the ache cleaner.

I move through the world now like a man slightly out of phase. Smiling when required. Laughing on cue. Telling jokes that land just well enough to pass inspection. I even went on a few dates, just to see if the machinery still worked.

“There are plenty of fish in the sea.”

“What you need is someone for the night.”

Advice dispensed like loose change.

Do people even believe the things that come out of their mouths? Or do they just speak because silence makes them nervous?

This isn’t about replacement. It’s about recognition.

I could sit here and say she never saw me.

Perhaps I never saw her.

If I’m honest — for once — it’s probably both.

There were moments I mistook her quiet for contentment. Moments she mistook my restraint for indifference. We were standing inches apart, translating each other poorly.

I thought love meant stability. She might have needed expansion. I thought silence meant peace. She might have heard distance.

No one storms out when this happens.

Things just cool.

An empty room doesn’t echo because someone smashed it. It echoes because no one is speaking inside it anymore.

Winter makes it easier to pretend that’s natural.

But maybe the slow burn was always there — not fire consuming us, but warmth fading a degree at a time until we were both shivering, pretending not to notice.

Maybe being seen begins with learning how to see.

And maybe next time, I’ll look closer.