BY GREELEY RIORDAN

another year, and i am still here. alive.
breathing. brother, we have made it this far. sister, hold out your
cup — let me fill it! we are still here, my darlings, my
dear ones, my beloveds. i close my eyes, and
each dream is a memory. my best
friend, whom i have not spoken to in eight years,
goes to uni nearby and lives across the street.
her face is in all my dreams, still soft with baby-fat;
i tell myself this year i will speak to her again.
just five milligrams of lexapro can work miracles, you know. my
kid niece is so big and so small, bright-eyed, soft-haired. my heart swells with
love, the type i could not have imagined half a decade ago. what i
mean is that in my dreams, my baby brother is monkey-small,
no trouble to hold on my back. i dream this dream
often — how can he be so big, now, so near to a grown
person? taller than me, stronger than me. in a
quiet memory, we carried each other in the pool, arms interlocked.
right. those years are over, you know? all the years are over.
so it goes. so i take my lexapro and kiss my own knuckles and
think of beautiful futures in which i am
unafraid. i think my dreams might be less
vibrant if i lived more at day. so it goes.
when the clock chimed midnight, i choked down twelve grapes. the
xystus, untrodden, is beyond my reach. so it goes. i want to live
zealously, this year.