Cycle

It feels like it did before, you hear yourself repeat along the lining of your skull, a soft grating, a loud whisper longing to be heard. The same straining against restraints of your own acceptance, the same placid concession to mediocrity. Eight years later, are you in the same hamster wheel that caught you before. Complacency makes for easy prey.  

You look back to your piles of words and see the pattern repeated in their melodies. A year of few words leads to the bottom rock from which you push off toward the surface, enough indifference to creativity will eventually itch inside you until you've no choice but to scratch it till you bleed. 

I said I'd give up everything for this, and I did. 

But what point is losing it all,
if you don't come around to collect your reward, too?

A new year arrives. A bottom rock approaches. You see it now, don't look away. 

Don't flinch until it propels you to your next, great breath.