Ink Where the Future Isn’t Clean Yet [Wreath]
The plastic sleeve peels off with that ugly crinkle that sounds like every present you never really wanted,
New calendar smell drifting up like paper and quiet chemicals, fake promise bound and gridded and sorted and slotted.
Last year still hangs on the back wall, limp and crooked, December dog-eared and stained with coffee rings and phone numbers that went nowhere,
Days crossed out in angry Xs, a few just left blank like even time itself gave up pretending to care.
You thumb the old pages first, because of course you do,
Finding half-faded notes in cheap ink saying things like start running and eat better and that immortal lie of new you.
Some boxes are packed solid, arrows and scribbles and last-minute shifts; some are ghosts with one lonely word like call,
A handful of dates circled in red that meant everything back then and now don’t mean a damn thing at all.
There’s that week where someone went into the hospital, penciled in, then re-written darker, then underlined three times,
Then just stops; the rest of the month empties out like someone pulled the plug on all your rhymes.
The day they died is marked with a small star you don’t remember adding, and a single word: home—You stare at it until the letters blur, thinking of how cruel it is when coming home just means a stone you visit instead of a place you roam.
The new calendar waits on the table like a smug, clean slate,
Crisp pages stacked in perfect months, bound innocence pretending not to know it’s headed for the same wrecked fate.
You flip to January, first week all bare except for printed holidays and some tiny moon phases no one truly tracks,
Boxes waiting like open mouths, ready to swallow names, disasters, paydays, secrets, breakdowns, panic attacks.
You’ve been here before, pen held over the first square like it weighs five pounds more than it did in November,
Trying to decide if you’re the kind of idiot who still writes gym on Mondays and believes it this time, or if you remember.
There’s a part of you that wants to leave it all blank, let the year surprise you without a single plan at all,
Another part scribbles don’t screw it up again in the margin so hard the pen threatens to tear a hole in the wall.
You compromise, because that’s what you do now, you grown, exhausted, still-trying creature of habit and half-finished plans,
You write small things, almost shy: laundry, bills, dentist, and then, lower in the square, breathe when you can.
On one Friday, you add movie alone if needed, like you’re scheduling a date with your own tired bones,
On another Tuesday you mark call the person you keep avoiding and add a question mark that feels like stones.
February peeks ahead with its short, smug grin, promising cold, cheap chocolates, and at least one night where you feel way too alone,
You turn through those pages too, fingers slow, tracing imaginary moments that might happen, might not, depending on tone.
You find the month where a birthday used to sit like a neon sign in the middle of your year,
Now it’s just open space; you hesitate, then write their name in the top corner anyway, like a quiet dare against fear.
There’s a tenderness to the way your handwriting loses its sharp edges by March,
Replaced with quick hooks and lazy curves, ink running slightly as if the year itself is starting to lurch.
You can already imagine the future stains: a grease streak from a slice of late pizza, a water drop from a laugh-too-hard drink,
A tear blot you’ll pretend wasn’t yours, coffee splashes from mornings where you function purely on instinct, not think.
You remember the calendars you had as a kid, cartoon characters grinning above days packed with school holidays and silly notes like snowball fight scheduled,
How back then a fresh year meant glitter and classroom crafts and construction paper crowns that always ended up wrinkled.
Some small piece of that kid tugs your wrist now, whispering, Write something fun in here before everything serious moves in,
So you block out a Saturday and scribble do something absolutely stupid but not illegal, underlined with an evil little grin.
All at once your mind floods with the lives you might still cram into this thin stack of paper squares—That road trip you threaten yourself with every spring then push to “when things calm down,” which never really compares.
The apology you’ve rehearsed in your head that never graduates to voice,
The night you finally don’t drink just to shut off the noise, and the night you absolutely do, by choice.
You think of all the holidays waiting like checkpoints you’ll stumble past:Hearts taped in windows, eggs dyed hopeless colors, barbecue smoke in August clinging to your clothes like the past.
You don’t have to write them; the world will shout them at you plenty when the time comes,
But you still pencil in find a way not to hate this day next to one or two, savage humor laced with softened gums.
There’s this quiet admission as you stare at the spread:Last year did not turn you into a better person; it just roughed you up and left you half-awake instead.
You didn’t become the superhero version of yourself you keep advertising to your own brain at 3 a.m.,
You just survived, mostly, tripped over your own patterns, lost some people, lost some weight, found it again.
The miracle isn’t that the calendar gives you a clean start; it really doesn’t.
The miracle is that you keep buying them, keep opening them, keep writing in them when history says you shouldn’t.
That you keep daring to write maybe in ink on dates that could easily collapse,
Keep circling weekends with see friends when everyone is busy and your courage laps.
Somewhere between the big, dramatic vows and the tiny scribbles nobody ever sees,
Is the real religion of this whole ritual: not the fireworks or the champagne, but these.
Fresh pages that will be cluttered by taxes, arguments, birthdays, breakdowns, and surprise kisses in parking lots,
By sick days, work trips, dumb memes, car repairs, and the rare, perfect night that burns brighter than the rest of the blot.
You flip to December of the new year just to peek, like checking the back of a book you haven’t started yet,
Empty grids staring back at you with the kind of blank that almost counts as a threat.
Anything could happen there: new names, new scars, a small miracle, a new hole where someone used to stand,
You can’t control it, can’t bargain with it, can only promise yourself to show up, pen in hand.
So you go back to January, write your name at the top even though no one else will see it,
Claim the year, not as something you’re going to “fix,” but as a corridor you’re stubborn enough to walk through and not quit.
You add a note on the bottom margin of this first page, just for you to find when you’re hunting for a lost receipt,
It says, You made it here once already. That counts. Start from there, not from defeat.
Then you hang the calendar on the wall where last year’s limp, stained body sagged,
Push the thumbtack a little deeper, feel the drywall give with a soft surrender, slightly dragged.
Behind you, dishes wait in the sink, the world outside still a mess, your brain still loud with all the debts you owe,
But on the wall, fresh calendar pages breathe quietly, thin lungs filling with everything you don’t yet know.