Keeping What’s Still Alive

The year comes in loud, after countdowns, lists and vows, asking who I’ll be now that the year has turned around.

As if I didn’t spend twelve months learning how to stay. As if breathing through ordinary days wasn’t already proof–

that something in me refused to decay.

They want fireworks. A reveal. A rewritten self in cleaner handwriting.

But I am tired of introductions.

The calendar insists on beginnings, but my body keeps its own time— remembers the nights I almost gave up, And in the mornings, I still woke up.

It happens in rooms no one claps for, in habits small enough to forget, in choosing sleep over explanation, silence over spectacle.

I do not want to be transformed. I want to be maintained.

Let me keep the rituals that learned my shape— the chipped cup warming my palms, the chair that holds my evenings, the songs that pause exactly where it hurts.

Let me care for what remained when I wavered, when hope arrived late or left without notice, when growth resembled endurance more than becoming.

I am learning that care does not require haste. That healing may move slowly and still be honest. That staying whole is its own quiet miracle.

While the world rehearses reinvention, I choose the softer labor— sealing the cracks, watering what almost surrendered, believing in repetition over rebirth.

This year, I am not starting over. I am carrying forward.

Not brighter. Not brand new. Just steadier, Rooted where I grew.