This last year has given birth
to me, into the new year,
not in a weird way.
I have been squeezed.
I have cried
at pure chaotic grief
as I left the safety of last year
into the lonely quality of the next.
People are supposed to shed the dust
and baggage they collected from January to December,
are supposed to feel grateful to have made it to another
New Years’ party
to watch the ball drop,
an uncomfortable metaphor.
If you do not feel hopeful,
you’re doing it wrong.
You failed to sacrifice your bitterness
on the alter of ways you can lose a few pounds,
end that relationship,
start that book you always meant to write.
Not to personify Death, but
Death did visit me this winter, the season in which
the black robes look the newest and the most in place,
and took from me in the old year and the new,
and I forgot how important it was to drink,
play party games,
stay up past my bedtime so my thirty-year-old
body could witness another revolution of the planet.
Melcontents 