It’s the 8th day of the New Year and I’m behind. Behind in responding to comments. Behind in writing blog posts. Behind in reading blog posts. My Christmas decorations are still happily shining and my sink is full of dishes.

I share this because there’s a tendency this time of year to feel like you have to hit the ground running. January has to be YOUR month to get all the things done and to set into motion all the ways you wish to make your life better. It’s all a lie. Like so many untruths we tell ourselves, it’s just another example of perfectionism making us miserable.

Don’t let it.

I’ve chosen Movement as my word of the year. Any forward momentum toward my goals will be considered a success. No, I’ve not done much blogging, but I did take a trip to Tahoe and my photography heart got to dance in the snow. No, I’ve not done much cleaning of my house, but I’ve written a poem and short story in my journal every day this year so far. Movement. Like water over stones. It all matters.

If you’ve been around here a minute, you’ll know I have a deep love for David Bowie. Today would be his 77th birthday and last night I dreamed I was in his Lazarus music video. I was under the bed reaching my hand out to him. I woke and wrote this poem and a small flash fiction in his honor. I hope you enjoy them. They aren’t what I had planned to post but I’m learning to let my creativity go where it wants to.

Movement.

Flying

shadow fingertips
touch feather blankets
flutter free

like bluebirds racing sunlight
like bare branches in a breeze
like tomorrows that don’t come

it’s just like you to leave us
quick as lightning
moonman mornings
starlight singings

fly free toward me

One who moves

I don’t want him to call me his bluebird one last time, although he does it anyway in a raspy voice I barely recognize. It matters to him, but I refuse sentimentality. I suppose it’s my way of fighting back. I know he understands.

“Time loops around,” I whisper when his heart stops.

Someone screams. Someone else runs to tell the people waiting on the mountain. Or maybe nobody is here at all except me. I wipe his eyes with the damp hem of my dress. I clean his face of tears, but the ones on my face are dry now.

He’s not gone, I yell to those wailing and screaming, but maybe the certainty he gave me at the end was only for me. He was fond of parting gifts. A lifetime of moon whispering, hip swaying, star gazing, and half-smiles don’t disappear. Not fully.

He’s writing everything down in a notebook beside the river while I wade up to my knees in the cool lapping water. Geese loudly scream out for attention, but I don’t take my eyes off his pen. Rocks beneath my toes are covered in slimy moss and they sing to me. The sky above is as blue as his right eye, maybe not even as blue as that. Clouds find a way to shift. Moving toward him, like we all do. Like I want to do right now.

Our years have now become days. We change nothing. We do nothing different. For certainty and love requires surrender to the forces of nature. A deer walks into the water and stands near me drinking loudly. Its side constricts and contracts—a life that does not care who we are because we are just like it. One who drinks. One who moves. One who watches the sky and feels the earth.

The pen stops and he looks at me over his notebook and perhaps he’s smiling. I can’t tell because the sun has burst through the dancing clouds and turned him into a being a light. “Free,” I think I hear him say, and just like the bluebird he takes flight. His wings sound like music.

*All photos were taken and edited by me.