It's Only

It's only January, you yell to yourself as the mud gets thick around you. Stand at a fossilized skeleton in a Natural History Museum and explain to a preschooler what sediment is, how these great strong animals were struck down in silt, buried in the mulch, how it covered them and buried them and peeled their skin away. How they surrendered. 

I think (every year I think) these depths are new, I am surprised at the stranglehold around me, I marvel at my misfortune, how I latch on to fears and this black hole in my chest, forgetting (every year forgetting) that it is only January dragging its wet blanket across my eyelids, dragging my leaded body down the slope to Charon, like so many dying cells. It is only January that proceeds to strangle the breath from my withering body. They say the snow is coming this week but one day spring will return again, one day I will remember what it is to breathe again and perhaps all these boulders I call jagged obstacles will turn out to be stepping stones, will turn out to be dust shadow and in fact I was fine all along, I just couldn't see it for all the dark poison in my eyes. 

January is only a collection of stumbles, you remind yourself. It drags you across shards of broken glass painted to look like your own reflection but remember: it's only a nightmare. 

When it is time, you will wake up 

and everything 

will turn out 

okay.