(Post-Thanksgiving Reflection)

The Court’s chaos has cooled. The kitchen’s gone still.

There are crumbs of laughter in the corners and a faint scent of cinnamon clinging to the air, but the battles of gravy and pie have been fought, forgiven, and turned into stories.

November was a noisy month, warm, golden, and a little unhinged. It felt like a family learning how to love each other out loud. But every season of noise has its echo, and December… December wants to listen.

There’s something sacred in the silence that follows celebration. The way it presses softly against the ribs and says, “You can rest now.” The way the heart finally has room to speak once the world quiets down. This is where healing hides, between the inhale of what was and the exhale of what’s to come.

December will be slower. Fewer spoon wars, more stillness. Fewer roaring kitchens, more rooms lit by a single lamp and the hum of breathing beside you. This month’s rhythm will be poetry, small, deliberate, forgiving. Words that reach inward instead of outward.

Lately, I’ve been working on the slower things on myself, mostly. Revisiting older poems that still hum with unfinished truths. Sorting through the unearthed family photos that seem to hold more questions than answers. Letting the act of remembering be its own kind of writing. There’s no deadline for this kind of work, only the small mercy of patience. December feels like the right time to move gently through it all, to write slower, breathe deeper, and let the past whisper what it needs to before I turn the next page.

I want to explore the quiet as its own kind of medicine…the kind that doesn’t demand progress or productivity, just presence. Healing that doesn’t rush. Forgiveness that doesn’t perform.

So, as the year leans toward its ending, thank you for being here…for reading, laughing, and holding space for the small worlds we’ve built together. The next pages will be gentler, written for the soft hours when the world finally lets us hear ourselves think.

After the feast comes the quiet.

And in that quiet, I hope we remember how to heal.