there once was

An Ode to Ache (New Year's Eve Blues)

January February March

Sometimes I remember to forget

April May June

I am learning to forget

July August September

Sometimes I forget to remember

October November

We no longer coexist; I am independent of you

December

December December December

December December December

Christmas

December

December thirty-first

I write, with ten fingers freezing over and a chest thawing out, 

An ode to the Old Familiar Visceral Ache

Now finely line with grey and white

We've met, I say

I almost didn't recognise you––

The last time we spoke you had hair jet-black and full

Now you are finely lined with grey and white

But age hasn't caught up with your ability,

Still so palpable you feel like

Threads coming undone with haste;

Splitting at the very seams

All right in the very core of my being; 

At the farthest end of my skull

Tension tension tension

It has been a year but you, Familiar Ache, still play on as good as new

My leaves my bones

They fall all around me

I wear Forgetting like a purple robe

But then came the Old Familiar Visceral Ache

Stomach churning––

I am a big eater but this time 

I have barely started on my dinner and I can't continue

With you around everything seems too much

Even nothing seems too much

With you around, Old Familiar Visceral Ache

Head spinning callously; cruelly on––

Mind whirred into a vertigo

Masquerade ball

It seems so wrong

So wrong so wrong right so wrong so wrong

But the wrong could far outweigh the right and I could care less

Because one right obliterates all the wrongs and

Even if that is wrong 

You make it feel so right

One more dance; one more chance to graze these empty halls we pretend to be strawberry fields

So wrong but you make it feel right

Masquerade ball

I am not who you think I am

I am not new to this dance

I am she––

With a mask

So wrong so wrong yet right,
Says the Old Familiar Ache