Winter

For many winter is a time of depression. The world is grey. The weather is dreary. It's cold. So so cold.

For me, for the last four years, winter has been a time of joy. Something to look forward to. Winter is always the time I get to spend with Americo.

Winter is cozy blankets. Mainlining a TV series. Trips to Starbucks for pumpkin spice lattes. Spicy Chinese shared for lunch. Late nights. Late mornings cuddling.

Winter is our time.

Until now.

There is no trip this year. There is no Halloween. No Christmas trees. No sunsets on windblown beaches. No pecan pie. No family Thanksgiving.

There is just me.

And I can rationalise it. I understand it, I really do. It's been long enough with the trips back and forth. We want this visa. Desperately. There is nothing I want more than the thing where I get to pick him up from the airport and not give him back.

I dream about it constantly.

Picking him up at the airport, straight to hotel to change, wedding in the Asian Gardens in Darling Harbour, a week down the coast soaking in warm winter sunshine and watching spectacular storms crashing across the bay.

And so I have my first winter without him in four years.

My first whole year without him in four years.

I will not see my fiancé in 2013 and I have no words for the heartbreak of that.

Winter is here. The world is grey. Rain. Wind. Storms. And cold, painful, biting, down to my bones, freezing my joints cold.

This year there is no sunshine to brighten my winter.

Like the song says, there ain't no sunshine when he's gone.