To most, January is like a new, fresh start.

Where they can chide or discover solutions,

play in the snow, play their part, 

and redeem themselves from pollution.

But to me, that month is a martyr,

torturing my heart all the time.

Its title feigns peace,

but I have exhumed and seen the crime.

This forgery of this scenery began in the year of twenty,

with the feline, young and brave,

when the gleeful, snow-filled month gave present to its successor,

when joy and jolly became dull and grave. 

The youthful cat, tarred in the gossamer of death,

capital could not provide,

we were forced to keep him in the sticky, stinged stomachs web,

and after that, he died.

Annually, January became precarious:

each month, a tintinnabulation of wretchèdness.

The next event, more unfortunate,

made this life all the more arduous.

A father, a mother,

two sons and a dog.

Anxiety and treachery tore them asunder

one turns to two, it's like choking on smog.

Craven, infrequent, always cravin' food.

This is my dad in his last suburban days.

Always starin', uncertain, under a curtain,

and then he snapped - and ran away.

Perhaps it's best to ignore the weather.

But the weather stalks you - it crinkles your heart.

You try to escape, but it hooks you one-thousand times,

tearing at you until your perspective is cacophony.

This fickle weather which messes with your brain -

it's hard to explain, but it

shows you sun and brings you rain, 

it drips and snows and shines and wanes,

the image of minute stillness, it feigns!

It causes the earth and sea to fester in vain!

Mother Nature inflicts our pain!

The myriad climates drive me insane!

…yet to others, oblivious, it simply seems… lame.

I have entreated this horrid month, pleading.

And this year, this month, I have been answered.

For January has put a balm of peace over itself,

now intertwined in a veil, a seal of solitude in which it stalls itself.

This year, I have learned to accept and forgive.

What happens in time is no one's volition.

And though misfortune batters your way to live,

January and I are both connoisseurs in holding position:

our positions of life

and who we truly are.