Another day.  A birthday.  Another year down the drain.

    I’m twenty-seven today.  Twenty-seven.  I am a number.

    This day is supposed to be a bad one.  A pattern has developed.  The evens are good.  The odds are always so horrid.  So utterly wretched.
   
    But maybe things can be different.  Maybe we can break this cycle.  Maybe things will change.  

After all, they are, aren’t they?  That’s what we’ve been doing the past month.  From the moment you walked into that clinic and exposed yourself to the world.  From the moment you decided to address the plague that has crippled you for so long.  The plague you secretly loved.  Possibly still love.  Are so afraid of removing.  

Let go.

But we’re moving forward.  We’re pushing and straining and trying and trying and trying.  We can’t stop trying.  We can’t.  There’s no choice.

So, we enter this year as clean as we can.  We wipe off the residue and muck we carried from the previous.  We bathe ourselves.  Brush off the dust.  Shovel out the ash.  

Time to build it back up.  Time to try again.  And we will keep trying.  It’s all we can do.