Today I leave nothing to the imagination
In a historically accurate setting.
I, your narrator to navigate through
Corridors of a physical mindscape
(no escape)
Decorated with impressions and caricatures.
Follow my voice,
I invite and incite all Memories:
A curation of characters and sentimentalities.
Taxidermy preserved to its last breath.
Exhibitionist curiosity.
I must be an architect
to reconstruct a desolated house.  
"Welcome home," to my
Recollection residence.
Archaeological labor too, to unearth
Buried civilities and forgotten feuds.

To stand in the ashes of
A prison of twelve winters
On summits is a struggle
To surmount shades and shadows.
Pouncing, pulse,
I suture each slash with sleep.
But here you are,
pilgrim of an echo,
breathing life,
you have struck a chord
—And a dissonance that
thrusts me into the future—
that rings through my forlorn past.
This time, in that foreign country,
a new page slowly, slowly turns.

As her final breaths escaped her,
she felt calmed by the epiphany
that peace would follow her.
Not right away, but it would come.
Sleepy Sunday afternoons,
and days spent without thought.
Her pain now was fleeting,
so corporeal in nature
as to be meaningless;
her mind was as white
as the snow in which she lay.

All was still. All was done.
And all was begun anew.

learning to be
aware of how to hold
my physical being
creeping into the christening
resistant fingers and toes
curled inward in fear
driven by woes

As this world degrades,
And we've had enough of the old ways.

I can only wonder what becomes,
After this new birth,
Decays.

I know this world's rules,
And those before,

And I may know of what comes next,

But I will not know what rules,
As they call the next of next,

The fool.

**** the old year!
**** the old you!

****** it
Slaughter it
Toss it to the wolves
Watch it die slowly

Your pains and failures and sorrows and mistakes and regrets from the past year
Whimpering
Wheezing
Gasping for their last breath

Stand in triumph over your ****
And seize the new day
The new year
The new opportunities
That now stand before you

So when you look back
A year from now
You will know

You absolutely killed it

There's something incredibly southing about taking in this frigid air
Its chill flows through me
Dispelling the tired leaves of a long sweltering season
I'm left bare
An opportunity to appreciate the strength of my roots
Admire my branches
Though they be crooked, brimming with knots, and countless broken branches
Will I survive this time of reflection and blossom in time for Spring
Or cower in fear of another snapped limb