Abrupt Ends

In a whirl, Christmas recedes to history. Jaunty string lights seem suddenly out of place, dry pine trees shudder in dusty corners, wondering what happened. Spring lies still eons away as we enter the long dark tea-time of the soul, those wasted months without light, without celebrations to punctuate the darkness. You take your pills and will them to work (they will not), go through the motions of what it is to be a human (you read it in a book once, but are not sure you got it quite right after all), think if I can only make it to May, but then have nothing to come after it. Every month feels like an ordeal that you must survive. 

You remind yourself that it will not feel like that forever. 

He writes from the equator and reminds you of travel and discovery, how was it almost a year now since you yourself discovered their lands? You still think things would be better if he could meet you at that bar on 23rd street. It’s strange to look at your life and think some things may never happen in it, again. 

A manuscript lies waiting for you, they’re always waiting for you, every time you think it’s time to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and make an honest living, it’s like a war cry to them, it’s a song that brings them from their slumber and rallies the troops again, saying bootstraps were never what you wanted your life to be but words, Words, goddamnit! There was a time when you thought you could build a whole life with words. 

And so you pick up the script again. So you close your door to January, to new year new you, to making smarter choices. I’m looking for an old me now, I’m looking for a bar on 23rd street and a future that still held magic, I’m looking for all the things that feel like home to tell me they are still alive within me. A winter is long but w life is short, so short. If the fire calls you, you may as we’ll jump in it. 

You do no one any favors by coming out of this unscathed.