Mire

How you recognize it like an old friend when it arrives. For days it circles you, on the horizon, at your doorstep, just outside your line of vision, you know it is there but when you turn around the sun appears to be shining. Your steps slow, your head falls heavy on the pillow each night, you think you could sleep forever and curse how tempting the thought. And then one day it stands there, straight in front of you, unabashedly real, reaching out its hands as if to shake yours but instead plunging straight into your chest and wringing the last pulse from your cold, leaden heart. You recognize its fingerprints along your membranes, revel almost in the calm comfort of giving up, giving in, being swept away and drowned by its heavy, thick treacle, it is here at last now I needn't run from it any longer.

Winter lies dark and impossibly long ahead. You know there was something you were meant to do with your days, but you cannot for the life of you remember it now. Perhaps the secret was you were never meant to do that at all. You sit yourself down in the deep, dark, sticky mess of your convictions.

Wonder who you'll decide to be when it's time to step out.