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One year closes, and I know that I'm supposed

to take a long and introspective look at what
has taken place within the last 12 months, but
since I also had a birthday recently, I had to do
it then, but looking back for 12 times 56. So much
I'm thankful for, the joys, delights, the people who
have taken time to know and love, the things
that stretched me, grew me up, the hurting things
(but mostly people - things can hardly help it).
The sum of great and good and not-so-good
combined with worst-thing-ever has all
flavored, tempered, sharpened me in
certain ways, refined and pruned and smoothed a
way rough edges in yet some more, in summary
a coalescence letting me be who I am today.
And since you love me just the way I am,
precisely, exactly, definitively looking past
the quirks and flaws, I find that very cool.
Another year now looms, the hated turn of numbers
which I always dread, but the hope of it, the possibilities,
that sense of one enormous page still blank on which to write
whatever I might choose, looms larger still.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2013