First month of the year, named for
the ancient Roman god of beginnings,
doorways, transitions and endings: poised
at the terminus of change, countenance
like a book with leaves splayed open
to face forward and back. And I too
am caught perennially in passage,
ambivalent nature wanting most of all
to hold on but also to let go. Another
cycle, another drift; and no real
middle ground between knowing and not-
knowing, between feeling like I’m done
here, and like I’ve only just begun. Amid
the bright, tinny noises of celebration,
desperately I long for silence; and in
the thick of silence, want to be taken back,
enfolded instead of exiled. I am a boat
sailing forward into the current, and what
the water brings back because it doesn’t know
what else to do. I’m the girl that picks up
the vessel and fills it at the well, only
to empty it on walking back. I shield a flame
in darkness; in sunlight I shade my eyes. I break
and put myself together, over and over again.