Countdown

"I will stand still when the numbers change, hope my name flickers somewhere behind his eyes."

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Happy new year! I hope you will have a great 2026 filled with love, kindness, gratitude and creativity. One of my resolutions is to take care of my creative heart as much as my intellectual one. To find balance in the chaos of this life. And this first poem of 2026 will be the start of this journey.

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The year wraps around the wire
I am afraid to touch.
Time finally silences itself,
rooms everywhere filling with noise,
glasses raised like small moons,
doors closing on versions of us
that will never quite leave.

Somewhere else, warmth is arranged carefully.
Laughter set out like plates,
tradition kept in place.
I imagine the weight of that closeness
and feel something split inside me.
Gratitude braided with guilt,
want threaded through restraint,
anger swallowed so it doesn’t bruise
what little I am allowed to hold.

I imagine the moment.
Glass raised,
noise blooming,
a kiss exchanged in a script I am not written into.
I wonder if a thought escapes anyway,
slips its leash,
finds me briefly
as the year collapses into itself.

Joy comes first,
uninvited, reckless,
the simple miracle of having known.
Of carrying this year like a pressed flower,
proof that something impossible
once grew in real time.

Then longing arrives,
slow and ceremonial.
It sets the table for absence,
lays out memories like silverware,
asks me to sit with them
until the clock moves.

Guilt hums beneath it all,
a low electrical current.
The knowledge of borrowed warmth.
The understanding that love
can be real and wrong
in the same breath.
Anger flickers.
At the calendar,
at the rules,
at myself for wanting more
than I am allowed to touch.

I do not resent the clock.
I resent how much I love it
for carrying me closer to him
even when it only drives him
away from me.

I have set alarms like small prayers,
one for my midnight,
one for his.
Two separate entrances
into the same moment.
I will stand still when the numbers change,
hope my name flickers somewhere
behind his eyes,
hope I exist as more than silence
when the world resets itself.
I am furious with fate
for its irony.
I express my gratitude,
anyway.

When the last second passes,
I close my eyes.
Not to escape,
to imagine.
To picture a thought crossing his mind
like a brief spark in the dark.
Not demand.
Just recognition.
Just there you are.

I do not know how long I will be allowed
to hold this.
I only know it has already altered me.

The year turns.
I close my eyes.
Joy and grief hold hands.
And somewhere, between two clocks,
I hope, quietly, fiercely
that I cross his mind
the way he has crossed into me,
and never left.

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