of Giving

A Monday arrives, the days pass so quickly in December, racing toward a socially constructed finish line and leaving you grasping at remaining moments to complete your to do lists and impossible dreams before it is too late, before you are too old. An alarm clock ticks at the edge of your vision, reminds you it will soon scream into the ether and it will be too late for you to change your mind, to reclaim your soul and your beating heart from the devil with whom you made deals so long ago. You spent a lifetime building armor, and now you want only to tear it down, life is a cruel joke if you look too closely, best not to. You string another garland of colorful lights around the joyful apartment, sink into reprieve, see your body soften not from love but from protection, I know I have to do something about this because nobody else will, and anyway soon a new year will appear full of promise and potential, soon you can reinvent the wheels under your armor.

I think perhaps your cuts hurt me more than I knew and this shield just kept us both from seeing the blood as it drained from my body.

Sometimes I fear we know too much of life, and that is what turns us against it. Perhaps when the new year comes, we should shed our skin how we built it, should wash our memories clean and start anew with only hope, only faith, only beating hearts no thought to how they bleed. If ignorance is bliss, perhaps this is the year we transcend into oblivion.