Footsteps at the Door
The Door, The Frost, The Unanswered Knock.
Some absences knock even when you stop listening.
I don’t care for them.
The snow still falls
where it wishes
on my clean, quiet step.
I don’t care for them.
Gray shadows
tangle in the leaves
everywhere I choose to walk.
But the frost writes your name
on my window at dawn,
and the wind hums a tune
I’ve been trying to outrun.
I don’t care for them,
not anymore,
so why does the rain
sound like footsteps at my door?
I don’t care for them.
Letters left unopened,
fading in the afternoon sun.
So why does the rain
still trace a name I know?
Why does the wind still miss you
when I don’t?
The frost writes your name
on my window at dawn,
and the wind hums a tune
I’ve been trying to outrun.
I don’t care for them, No
not anymore,
so why does the rain
sound like footsteps at my door?
Seasons turn..
without permission,
bringing back the same old questions.
In every storm,
a silent face.
In every quiet,
an empty space.
Why does the rain trace a name I know?
Why does the wind still miss you
when I don’t?
I don’t care for them.
I don’t care.
The night feels so long.
The rain speaks so softly.
But the snow still falls
exactly where it wishes.
I don’t care.
I Don’t Care…
Author’s Note:
Footsteps at the Door, began as an observation that how the world keeps speaking of someone long after you’ve decided not to listen. It’s built around that quiet tension between the will to move on and the weather that won’t forget.
I’ve always found that nature holds onto what we try to release, frost that etches a name, rain that mimics a knock, snow that falls exactly where it pleases.
If you’ve ever felt the past tap gently at your door, at your present, perhaps these lines will echo what you already know.
Hi pm, I don’t think this message is going to reach you because all of my previous comments on your poems lately have vanished (the current Substack tech malfunctions and glitches). But I left you some very important messages in our chat about the fact that we have had to reschedule the Mirror Poems post for less than 9 hours from now. I’m sorry about the last minute notification but the messages describe the reasons. I’m going to post a note about it after this message because I don’t think you’ll get it. Hope I’m wrong.
I didn’t want to care.
But caring stayed.
So I looked at them.
And like a quiet lie,
the caring began to dim.
The snow falling white,
the rain falling slow—
because I knew
as night gives way to morning,
they would end.
I didn’t want to care.
But I stayed.
Long enough
for rain to be only rain,
not footsteps.
Long enough
for frost to touch the glass
without writing a name.
I didn’t want to care.
But I watched.
And watching,
the watching loosened.
The snow still falls.
The rain still comes.
But they no longer ask me anything.
Night passes.
Morning arrives.
Not by permission—
by time.
I cared.
And so,
the caring no longer held me.