It was a year of wind-changes. I woke like a bird at dawn every day, rustling my feathers, wondering where the light would fall.
I kept trying to catch and capture my identity even as it was stripped from me. Burrowed in. Burrowed out. Called myself new names.
I split each day between sleep and slough. I'd lost my sense of wonder, and it came back the more I craned my neck. It came back the more sweet things I ate, the more songs I tried to sing in languages I didn't know, the more narrow cobble I climbed.
The year ahead is already halved and quartered. Hard work, hustle, New York. Then on - maybe Alaska, New Hampshire, Iowa.
I flick my eyelids up and down. I tell myself to be better. I delete the numbers I shouldn't call. I pack away the poems I shouldn't read. I'll get small and strong, I'll get more honest. I'll get less selfish.
If someone were to ask what I wanted, I'd tell them first about the dream I had that I knew was from God: the one where I woke up knowing where to go and how to get there.
Then I'd tell them after that!
I'd tell them: Life's been pick-pocketing me, but I don't mind.
On the first day of January, we drove away from the mountains drunk on muscadine wine. I stretched my mouth and curled my fingers - hands to the wheel, eyes narrowed against the dark, moving forward with all the fear and courage of the present and the past.
