"This year I will sleep more and cry more.I will learn how to listen to my body,How to feed her..."

“This year I will sleep more and cry more.

I will learn how to listen to my body,

How to feed her when she’s hungry

And not when she is bored, or lonely.

This year is about putting away apologies—

Shaking the old dust out of my bones,

Getting rid of people and places

That have stopped feeling like home.

.

This year is about the deep kind of soul searching

Reserved for brooding men in classic literature.

This year is for falling in love with all the ways

I am able to feel.

My world is vibrant and alive

And to numb myself would be to waste this body

To waste this breath.

.

Somewhere, billions of years ago,

A star died to put the marrow in my bones

And I ought to make good use of that.

.

I am the result of ten million factors all

Working against me ever coming into existence

And I am here anyway.

.

How could I forget that the same skin

That houses all my anxieties also holds

The same kind of rain that fills oceans?

I have a small lightning storm brewing

In the barrel of my ribs,

How could I forget that?

.

This year, I will be kind to my body,

Because she has always been kind to me.

Because she has entire orchestras beneath her fingernails,

And after so many years,

She deserves a good audience.

.

I am too young to feel so old.

This is the year I change that.”

- This Year, by Ashe Vernon