Purged

If I can only make it through this next week, it will all be okay, I had heard a voice say, as though it weren't my own. So few moments of stillness, of solitude, and only fewer on the horizon as plans and promises amassed. This was not the time to be incapacitated.

All this I contemplated, as I lay in the dark night, yet again purging whatever evils had nestled their way into my belly. As though the fates conspired with my body and gave me the break I needed but for which there was no time. Shame called work, cancelled evening plans, apologized for deadlines missed, and promptly collapsed in a heap until night became day became night again.

When I finally come to, in the late afternoon, snow flakes trickle carelessly outside the window, the apartment is a mess, the to-do list endless. Regrets of meetings missed float through me, stab me in the gut at regular intervals, I cannot bear to think of them. There is only looking ahead, now. In me grows a restless energy, sprouts a tiny seed of madness, as though whatever sickness came and went took winter's dreary tiredness with it, cleaned house, opened the door for a new start, another spring. Unsteady legs make their way out of the stale refuge. New Year, New You. We can only hope.