The Quiet Turning

Some seasons
leave without announcing themselves.

The chairs remain,
the room unchanged,
yet the conversations
fit differently.

What once felt full
now echoes softly,
not from absence,
but from distance
measured in unnoticed steps.

There is no bitterness
in a river choosing
the gentlest path--
only the quiet certainty
that still water
cannot follow every bend.

So I walk
where the light falls differently,
carrying less,
not because I lost anything,
but because some things
were never meant
to travel this far