This Year

We wake glued to our live feeds. We fall asleep with their regurgitations seeping into our nightmares, each hour is the length of a year, and this year is the length of a lifetime, it seems apt. I listen to voices who say it will be okay. I try not to think about the other option. I will think about the future after the now is called, I tell them when they ask if I return now. But it took me four hours to move my car today and if that isn't a lesson in mindfulness,  I don't know what is. The sun was bright, a friend jumped into shotgun with a grilled cheese sandwich and a can-do attitude, and we chatted up the diehard New Yorkers while waiting for the traffic cop to leave us alone, there's nothing like the Lower East Side on a sunny day, and you returned to your overheated apartment without a shred of the weight that has dragged itself in your shadow for so long. 

There is always a dawn. There is always a day to follow both good and bad. They're counting the votes. You put one foot in front of the other. You do the work. Eventually, the parking spot appears, eventually the sun shines, eventually you make it work and and remember that small ember in the back of your throat. 

Eventually you speak a fire.