This time, as the year's last day scrapes up against its successor, I can't get past the word scrape, with its trail of blood and skin.
I have left both behind in 2018. And a lot more: my last birth, the last time I'll hold another being so gingerly, a degree or two of mental acuity, waves of regret.
I'm starting to feel my life closing up on me, which is what makes the exercise of bidding farewell to one year and greeting another so doleful this time around. I am reluctant to sum up my accomplishments, because I am afraid they are dwindling. I am reluctant to spell out my hopes, because I'm having trouble summoning them.
It has been alright, heretofore, to stagger from year to year under the weight of my responsibilities; now, I'm beginning to think I've been frittering my life away, and that I will waste, similarly, the decade or two I have left compos mentis.
(Autocorrect insists upon "composure mantis," which I'm sure I'll become soon enough.)
The person I want to talk to about this is my father, and he is, for that purpose and many other purposes, gone.
2019: Maybe it's the year to ask for nothing, to demand nothing of myself or the world. To observe as I can, remember what I can, be as I have to be.
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