The Year 2020
So twenty-twenty
Every month I met introduced me to happiness
With a doctored truth and a mentored lie
Or maybe it was structured news on pictured slides
Past of what’s present but never stayed for dinner
But it’s the weekend
So I’m hoping – for the death of me – I’m hoping to get a reply
Of purged months, and an explanation of remnant promises read and left untouched
From me to me. or me to I. or whatever screams crazy
I’m grateful. But for the life of me and truth of it, it is me but I’m not it: Grateful.
Ok some clarity. Or maybe just chronology. Whatever works.
January was cold and warm: the days and the place. It was the introduction.
It was the beauty of words. All twenty-six letters of English, and twenty-nine days of the month.
Oh my bad! Twenty-nine days had February. So fast so near.
And of those twenty-six letters very few sweet combinations now remained stored on my keypad due to constant use.
Half of twenty-four months later, with fractured backspaces
March happened many places. Actually, all places.
Promises, work, people, home, virus, and news.
So I attended a few.
April was May standing in front of a mirror. So for the billionth time, I told her she looked beautiful and she cried me the weather.
Of hearts and laughs and clouds and rain
So thanks were giving and thanks were taken,
Within June and without, even when I was bedridden.
Later it read: Yours lovely, July. For I fell in love with all that was mine.
And the pain of it didn’t come in August: A month I’d seen for the twenty fourth time.
I don’t do birthdays but I received gifts I couldn’t say no to
So for the umpteenth time, we lied then we lay below an unfathomable love we couldn’t hug its dimension and were grateful for its cozy covers
The pain of it didn’t come then even though the pain of it was my genre; so rainfall ceased September
But goodbyes were made to November in October
Where my heart was a broken record of all that was gone
Everything done is undone by the ending, but maybe something can be done with the ending
And in this year, I had seen a lot of life and death
I had visited hospitals more time than any year: but maybe not as much as 2014
I read books and written worlds
Shook and hugged other versions of twenty-twenty
From people and from hearts
Because like the stubbornness of a nineteen years teenage old boy captured in this nineteen days old teenage December and what came before, I must struggle
And as I said, this is the Introduction to My Happiness
I promise me the class won’t end here
Abu A’ish MK Albani
7:21 PM
19/12/2020