November has its own temperature in my life now. A private weather pattern that settles into the days leading up to my birthday. Sometimes even the days after my birthday too. When grief meets a date that is supposed to feel bright, something shifts, something lingers, and something refuses to fade. This poem moves through that space, the place where candles and memories coexist. The place where a mother’s absence still shapes the month and every breath inside it. I wrote this to honor that truth…
to let November speak the way it insists on speaking.
“No November Will Ever Be the Same”
November holds its own weather,
a sky that remembers
even when I try to forget.
My birthday rises,
a candle in a tiny room that
never carries your scent
four years later…
I have grown to miss it.
Four years without you,
the month keeps its imprint,
a bruise under the skin of another year,
tender when I press it,
tender when I don’t.
I press it just to feel
alive sometimes…
November keeps the ledger open,
ink still wet, pages turning
with your scent hidden somewhere
between the cold mornings
and the early nights.
People say time softens,
but November disagrees.
I walk through this month
as if I am carrying two fires,
one that celebrates my breathing
one that flickers for the woman
who taught me how to breathe at all.
What does November mean now?
A point between what was given,
what was taken?
A place where joy and loss sit
at the same table…
neither greeting the other?
No November will ever be the same.
I keep moving through it anyway,
candle in one hand,
memory in the other,
hoping the light I carry
is enough to keep them both lit.
Poet’s Note
This one carries the weight of four years. The very echo of that week and a day before my birthday that will forever lead me back to her. Writing it felt like holding two flames at once. The one that marks my birth and the one that marks her leaving. The poem flows with the tension, the ache, and the pull. They meet at the quiet acceptance that no November will ever return to what it used to be. If you are someone who walks through a month that changed you, I hope this piece sits with you in a way that feels steady.
We all know grief never asks for permission to reshape a month, a date, or a ritual. It moves in and alters the light around everything that follows. Sharing this poem is part of learning how to keep moving. With my candle in one hand, and her memory in the other. I will continue trusting that honoring both is enough. November will never be the same, but it still holds space for growth, reflection and the kind of love that keeps shaping us long after loss has taken its form.
