Winter, Quiet, and the In-Between

Winter has always been the season that asks me to slow down.

Not in a dramatic way. Not in a way that demands resolutions or reinvention. Just a quieter way of being. Shorter days. Softer light. Fewer expectations to be visibly productive or constantly present. Winter doesn’t need constant proof that you’re growing. It assumes you are, somewhere beneath the surface.

I didn’t plan to take a break from posting. It wasn’t a declaration or a boundary I announced ahead of time. It just happened. Life got a little fuller, a little louder, and I felt myself reaching for stillness instead of output. For once, I let that instinct lead.

There’s something deeply performative about constant visibility for me. Even when the work is sincere, even when the sharing comes from a genuine place. Over time, it can start to feel like growth only counts if it’s witnessed, named, documented in real time. Winter reminds me that this isn’t true. Some things need to unfold without an audience.

That quiet shaped this collection.

Winter: The Anthology, releasing January 30, was written in pauses. In reflection. In the spaces where nothing was asking me to explain myself or package my thoughts neatly. This collection closes out my series of poetry inspired by each of the seasons. In Winter, the poems live in solitude rather than loneliness, in stillness rather than absence. They sit with grief, memory, patience, and the slow work of becoming without rushing toward resolution.

I think winter gets misunderstood. It’s often framed as an ending, or something to 'get through' on the way to spring. But winter is a season of preparation. Roots deepen here. Strength gathers quietly. Growth happens even when no one is clapping for it.

If you’ve felt tired of performing your healing, your creativity, your progress... this book is for you. If you’ve been moving more slowly than you think you should, or stepping back instead of forward, I hope these poems feel like permission rather than instruction.

Below is one poem from Winter. It’s a small piece of the larger whole, but it carries the spirit of the season: quiet, patient, and alive beneath the surface.

Thank you for being here, even when I’m quieter than usual... Especially when I'm quieter than usual.

Waiting Without Expectation

The hush of winter falls unnoticed

No trumpet, no warning, only the slow tilt

Of days collapsing into stretched nights,

Time unspooling in gray threads where nothing

Urges forward.

I am waiting without expectation:

Not for thaw, nor for sunrise, nor even

A gentle shift in the wind.

The world has stilled itself, and I

Am stitched in its silent ritual the slow undoing

Endurance becomes the soft labor

Of breath condensing in air;

The body a quiet vessel, learning once more

How to be unmoved.

Each moment circles back, the clock hands

hesitant, unsure what future they measure.

I sit within their uncertainty,

Feeling the weight of hours, gentle and persistent,

As snow that never quite falls, but threatens.

In this longest night,

I am a witness to stasis:

The unremarkable courage found in stillness.

Waiting not for transformation,

But for the wisdom of persistence.

My body learns the cost of motion,

finds gratitude in the refusal to rush,

In the quiet discipline that asks nothing,

Receives nothing, but continues.

Outside, frost knits its tapestry across glass

A language of cold, slow and unwavering.

I do not answer it. I do not ask for heat.

I am practiced in this winter waiting:

Knowing that nothing is achieved,

Nothing resolved, yet still

The day will come, and go,

Carrying me in its silent arms.

So I remain.

Neither hopeful nor unhopeful.

The world quietly passes through me,

And I through it

Waiting, simply waiting,

Until waiting becomes living,

And expectation, at last, is released

Into the pale hush of winter.

E. C. Mira