hyenahell

the space between Christmas and New Year's Day kills me.

the last sputtering breath of the year, and it's always heavy with a tangible sense of longing. some people would call it nostalgia, but i abhor that word. it makes me think of faux-Fifties diners, and "I Love Lucy" reruns.

and these are dangerous days. the year has worn itself out, the veil has worn itself thin. we're far too close to the dead- they speak to us in dreams and quiet moments and you know, they're longing for something, too.

and it seems like time itself has shut up shop and gone on holiday, same as everyone else. the normal laws of the passage of time don't seems to apply right now. it is as if time slows, progressively, to a dead stop, and then picks itself up and carries on once the clock strikes twelve and we cross into the next year. and in this week or so of slowing, time does not mind to let the past come calling, whenever it wishes, to haunt and torment the denizens of the present. they have an arrangement, i'm quiet certain of it.

and i sit in silence, faithful to the rituals of waiting. coffee cups and cigarette buts mark out the time, because nothing else will. and the silence cuts my soul, painlessly at first, like a fresh blade. but then the onslaught, the rushing in of past and future, all at once, and breathing down my neck. what was, what will be, what never will be or what never was- i see it all- visions and memories, until i cannot distinguish between what is told and what is fortold, and what fantasies my mind constructed to keep me from the cold, or to bury me...

well. i have the burying type of mind, always kicking up dust and pointing out the obvious. always berating me, reminding me of all i've lost, or had taken from me, or just given away for want of effort. it holds congress with the absent and the dead on a regular basis, this time of year. it fills my hours with desperation- an acute sense that if i don't do something soon to break this spell that's holding me in place, keeping me quiet and still and stuck, then it will be too late and i will have wasted the best years i have in me. and it might be so. the cruelest words are usually the ones that allude something we already know, but are to afraid to admit.

so here i am, at the year's end; the year that was, for myself and for many, the end of the world. i close my eyes and there is a primordial darkness, there is a fresh grave in the damp, black earth, there is a devouring void, there is a faceless moon, and this is the precinct of the dead.

but beneath it all is a shred of hope; a tiny bit hidden amid the dregs of the year. we've made it through the longest night, the very pit of despair. we're moving toward the light, now, even if we can't see it yet. so, here's hoping next year will be better. and here's hoping that this time next year, everyone will be safe, and above ground. here's hoping. just hoping. sometimes that's all we have.

love, always.
-Hyena.