New year.

My thoughts are shape shifting.
They are the words that make my life a 
story worthy of pride.
They are my North Star, guiding me through 
forests of uncertainty and deserts of sadness.
They are fluttering birds zapping across my brain
like an electric shock.
They are bulbous elephants stomping on my neurones
until they are fried and useless.
They are sharks with serrated blades for teeth 
bleeding my head into an ocean of seemingly 
impregnable fears.
And sometimes, they are every living creature 
one could possibly find on the face of this earth. 
And in times like these, when they are 
bigger than me,
I abandon them in a corner of my brain
they must now be familiar with,
and borrow someone else’s. 
Sometimes, I let me thoughts be engulfed by those 
that I presume the stranger who met my eyes across 
the spice aisle of the grocery store might think.
Or maybe that distant cousin who despite me being 
the youngest, didn’t make me feel small. 
or maybe when I am feeling particularly grand, 
I think I am Frida Kahlo manifesting the next
masterpiece with her pain.
and when I think of this new year, 
which inevitably makes me think of the last year,
my thoughts become stalactites poking 
at my brain.
So I try and abandon them 
only to fail, and
the shards of the frozen limestone rebuke me 
to face the truth.
A truth that tells me that there is a 
long stretch of paper torn from the prettiest 
notebook, waiting to be filled in,
and with my feet dripping in ink, 
I could either lay a path in blue on the pale paper 
of future, and move forward, forward, forward,
or I could stand right where i am and let the 
ink seep through it until my footsteps 
are too ink-soaked to hold up,
and with each rip I go, 
down, down, down.