New Year’s First Lie-In [Wreath]
The first morning of January drags itself up over the rooftops like it’s hung over from everyone’s declarations,
Light creeping in around the curtains with the shy courage of someone coming home late and hoping not to wake their own expectations.
You’re wrapped in a cocoon of blankets that smell like last night’s perfume and cheap beer breath and the faint ghost of confetti dust,
Pinned under comforters and sheets like a pinned butterfly that outlived the party, wings smudged, but still fluttering out of sheer stubborn trust.
The room is quiet enough that you can hear the radiator complaining in old metal,
The kind of mechanical grumble that feels almost human, like it, too, remembers yelling over bass and laughing about nothing that still somehow felt sentimental.
Your phone lies face down on the nightstand, screen dark, cold as a judge that went home early,
Next to an empty glass with lipstick fingerprints you don’t recognize or do and won’t admit it out loud, not when the world feels this blurry.
Your head throbs in a slow, pulsing rhythm, each beat replaying yesterday’s greatest hits on repeat,
The moment you shouted over the countdown, the too-loud joke you cracked, the sentence you never finished when someone brushed your arm and changed the beat.
You remember promising yourself, loudly and theatrically, that this is the year I get my shit together,
Then immediately losing the list of how somewhere between the champagne and the sidewalk and the strange January weather.
A sliver of cold air sneaks under the blankets at your feet like a guilt trip,
Reminding you that outside, the sidewalks are littered with bottle caps and broken resolutions, sticky from where someone let their self-control slip.
There’s a jacket on the chair with glitter on the collar and a torn seam under the sleeve,
Proof you danced harder than your body agreed to, in shoes your knees will definitely still believe.
Your stomach rolls a little at the memory of that last shot you didn’t need and took anyway just to shut down the part of your brain doing accounting,
Tallying all the wrong texts, wrong people, wrong timing; every message a little flare of bravery and self-sabotage mounting.
You think about checking your phone, then don’t, savoring this thin bubble of not knowing,
A tiny, fragile breath between dumb decisions and their consequences finally showing.
The blankets cling to you like an accomplice who’s sworn to keep the story quiet,
Holding your body in a soft arrest, muting the siren call of alarms and email and diet.
Your toes find a warm patch where someone else’s legs were hours ago, or maybe that was dream,
Some half-remembered hand tangled in yours while you yelled the countdown with strangers, lungs full of steam.
You breathe in and taste the sour sweetness of last night on your tongue,
Sugar, alcohol, someone’s vape cloud, leftover lipstick flavor clinging like a song you wish you’d never sung.
Regret curls nearby in the bed, not a monster, just a small, pouty thing with your own eyes,
It pokes you with highlights of last night’s reel—nothing catastrophic, just a montage of awkward tries.
You see yourself at 11:37, in the mirror of the bar bathroom,
Straightening your shirt, giving yourself that look like are you really doing this again, in the cracked fluorescent gloom.
You see the almost-kiss with the one who has always been almost something,
The way you pulled back an inch too late, making it more loaded than if you’d gone all in or done absolutely nothing.
You chuckle under your breath, the sound rough and soft,
Admitting that even your own disasters come with a strange charm, the way the wrong song at midnight still lifts the crowd aloft.
The blankets shift when you roll onto your back, staring at the ceiling where the dim light paints faint halos around old water stains,
Looks like a makeshift star chart for people who navigate by hangover, anxiety, and smudged hopes that still remain.
Some part of you whispers, like it does every year, that you’re behind,
Behind on growing up, behind on saving, behind on figuring out why you keep making the same dumb deals with your own mind.
Yet here you are, alive, messy, ridiculous, curled in a nest you cobbled together from thrift-store sheets and half-hearted promises to do better,
And somehow, even with the pounding in your skull and the lingering sting of last year’s unfinished chapters, things feel a little lighter here, a little less like a debtor letter.
You think about grand resolutions and feel them deflate like those balloons now slowly collapsing in living rooms everywhere,
Gold foil sagging, strings tangled, their bold numbers slipping down the wall like they’re too tired to care.
You decide—quietly, just for yourself—that maybe this year isn’t about some epic transformation or becoming your final form by spring,
Maybe it’s about small, almost invisible corrections, like actually drinking water between shots, like texting hey, I’m sorry when you fling the wrong sting.
You tuck your chin deeper into the pillow that holds the scent of your own skin,
Feeling oddly tender toward this idiot body that keeps hauling you through each calendar, each spin.
The sun moves another inch up the wall, turning your room into a slow-motion snow globe of dust and possibility,
And the blankets squeeze you in that perfect, heavy way that says stay, just a little longer and forgive yourself with some humility.
Later you’ll make coffee, strong enough to resurrect a small army,
You’ll toast something less impressive than a Pinterest breakfast and call it gourmet and feel weirdly proud and a little barmy.
You’ll scroll through the photos—some embarrassing, some golden, one where you look genuinely happy without realizing anyone was watching,
And maybe, just maybe, you’ll screenshot that one and save it as proof that it’s still in you, that kind of laughing.
For now, you lie still in your cotton cave while the first day of the new year tiptoes past your window,
Patient in its own strange way, offering you nothing more dramatic than one more chance to show up, slow.
Wrapped in blankets and leftover mistakes, you breathe in the bitter-sweetness of survival,
And feel a tiny, stubborn pulse inside you whisper, We get another round. That’s enough revival.