The songbirds will flee this winter in London but I will have to stay. The night is fading, the streets are so quiet and the whole sky is grey. I open my window vents and inhale the icy air and it takes my breath away. Still I know I’m one of the lucky ones who didn’t sleep rough out under the stars last night — praying they would survive and live another day.
Another year closes in and I wonder if I’m ready to reflect on what 2022 has meant for me and whether I believe that anything is possible for the year ahead. Some things will never change; time flying by and grief breaking me down and love knocking me off my feet. Palms face the sky as I embrace my rage and cling to a piece of peace. I’m learning to live with a measure of disorder and the sky high cost of living through gritted teeth. Some day I’ll fly away and find paradise where the Earth ends. Until then, like the morning — I will begin again.
This is the story of my life. Breathe. Read. Think. Feel. Write. I’m composing/revising sentences — most/all of the time — long before the ink meets the blank page. Some things will never change. What is the stuff inside my veins that compels me to stay open and honest enough to pour the magic and misery in my heart out? Understanding and harnessing this is how good people and solid nations are built. In my life I break but I grow through the cracks where the moonlight spills in and I bleed one short sentence and then another one somehow. In countless ways the year behind has bled me dry, but the reader and the poet live a thousand lives. I need true love and freedom to rejuvenate me.
Am I ready to believe that the year ahead is the part of my life where true love and freedom will be mine? I’m reaching for something even closer to the bone, something deep inside the light of my soul. I need a revolution. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be to reimagine true love and freedom and let them find me. I’ve been in the world just about long enough to know they have everything to do with damn near everything seen or unseen. The stars know what I mean. The idea of me was born billions of years ago in some distant memory. Time has brought me to the edge of 2023 knowing I was born to dance on starlight, in deep soft love and live a long soft life. But first, I need to tend to the right seeds. Breakthrough — will be the verb of my year ahead.
I need a moment of silence and a moment to scream. I’m falling apart but coming together — daring to dream. The world wants to know if I’m being driven or dragged. And soon I will have to face the answer to that. My memoir will be part love letter, part stardust and part ode to rage. My 2022 will go down swinging, messy and ablaze; heartache to ashes, ashes to yesterdays when the sky is dusking and the night is falling and winter marches on.
