Land

At last, you begin to catch up with yourself. See your reflection along the river and remember the sound of your shoes against the pavement. Sleep for hours, days, strange dreamed sleeps and spend hours awake before dawn for no apparent reason. Everything aches, except you feel untouchable, what a strange way to barrage into a new year, you find you do not mind it. She writes from across the ocean and all I can reply is I'm happy. It is simple, when it is.

I bought a light therapy lamp at last, sit staring straight into it in the mornings, singing sighs of relief with every breath. January sits like a canonball at the very edge of the precipice, as though still unsure which direction to go, but a weapon of destruction when it does.

Strap yourself in. There's nothing to do but follow.

Jan 2

If in in the end
You always wake up with
Yourself

Hadn’t you best like that person
As is
After all?

Blank

And then, how suddenly it arrives. You close your eyes briefly, watch your breath build in your body and when you open them again everything is new. The streets dance, your heart too. Everything is impossible until it is not; everything is possible until proven otherwise. A new year spreads out before you, clean, hopeful, already better than the last. You don’t believe in fairytales but damned if you don’t believe in fairies; who else would be whispering this magic to you? And what could you possibly lose by listening?

I built this life, brick by brick, I built this home.

It’s about time I lived in it.

Happy New Year.

Lean

I'm not a revolving door, she rants on the country radio in winding mountain passes, before static eats up the rest of her monologue. I'm a one way street. How exceptionally simplistic, you think as you hug the curves you know by heart. Life is so much more than platitudes. My mother cuts my hair, inches much too short and for just a moment my breath gets stuck in my throat. But it's only hair: it grows back.

The year races to its end, the decade saunters. You don't want to jump back, you don't need to run ahead. Somehow, for one short instant in your life, you are happy right where you stand. A year races to its end and you will not be sorry to see it go. A shiny new day rests on the horizon; is this not always the way? Ten years later, how much can you add to the conversation? The answer is that you have to grow every year to not bore yourself. You have to grow to make it worthwhile.

New Year,
Same You.

Just a little bit better
again.

Circle

(There must be a way
to be home 
and not feel like a 
wrung
out
sponge

but you haven't 
found it
yet)

Go West

You wish you had more words.

The way the sun breaks through snowy clouds over the mountains, the way the child who looks like your bloods ties himself to you in an instant, the way you suddenly sleep ten hours and you don’t know how, but everything is quiet.

I wrote her today, stretching on the warm back porch after and long run that went nowhere and said I am really, really happy.

Maybe those are all the words I need.

Ends

A day comes and goes too quickly. Promising to sit still, you end up rushing despite yourself and there’s never a moment to catch up with your own idea. Is it like this every year? you wonder, but memory is fickle. Walking through moments, it’s hard to know which one felt the most like a miracle, and still all you see ahead is Dark.

Set the alarm clock for well before dawn. Wonder if you’ll ever feel like it isn’t all simply slipping through your fingers.