You lie in your bed,

your hand outstretched

toward an empty ceiling

Waiting for a dream

to flare up like a flame,

to catch along your bones 

and seize you by the throat

But your mind

is dull and unfeeling

buried under the weight

of a clean slate.

You clutch at the resolutions

you made on December 31st,

now broken,

their jagged edges biting into your skin,

flecking a new chapter

of your life with hot, angry blood.

You hear the deafening tick-tick ticking

of the clock,

an urgent pounding in your skull

While your potential fizzles out

drip-drip dripping away like hot wax 

and bleeds into the non-existent cracks

around you.

Trapped in the crumbling shelter of

your thoughts,

you watch your fears 

wriggle to life, 

stretch into monstrous shadows

and claw a bloody pathway to your heart.

You desperately want 

to burn your old life

to the ground,

but courage isn’t summoned overnight

So instead, 

your nails tear into flesh

like needle through silk,

shedding layers and layers of old skin

Leaving behind

one bloody pulsating mass.

Your throat clenched like a fist,

you step into a new beginning,

only to fall down a well

through January to the end of time.

Gayashri Dissanayake