Auld Lang Syne

She took down the Christmas lights, twisted a tie around each one before placing them gently in the box. Today, she felt that heaviness of future. The what if as if the “if” were not guaranteed. She’d never experienced that before, until this year.

Blame it on covid. Blame it on turning sixty. Sixty?

Shouldn’t she be white-haired and frail?

The dogs bounced around her. Age was but a number, they said.

Age is but a number, she repeated.

Later, when she let them out, she glanced up at the sky where stars gleamed as they never did in the summertime sky. Too much atmospheric debris.

A meteorite jettisoned across the navy blue. She heard her daddy’s voice:

Star light, star bright,

First star I see tonight,

I wish I may, I wish I might,

Have this wish I wish tonight.

Oh, if you’d lived, she thought. Who might I have been?

Christmas boxed away until next November, she lit a candle and drank a gentle toast, the bubbles tickling her throat as she considered tomorrow and all of the possibilities. They were hers now and she wasn’t going to let them go.

So much to consider, so much to do. She didn’t bag the thoughts up. She let them float free, like so many fireflies on a summer sky.

end