it is 2:11 am and the air is cold.

the world celebrates;

a new year has arrived.

the others clearly hear it marching in

with trumpeters and fanfare,

lumbering at them like

Joe DiMaggio or Neil Armstrong,

ticker tape parade style.

to me, it is the nose on my face.

has it changed since yesterday? surely.

i am at a loss to tell you how,

but change is inescapable,

so i trust it is true.

i suppose i simply
can't see the parade from where i sit.

it was ok, maybe even a little cool,

to turn 10 and have a 2-digit age,

but how-does-it-feel-to-be-10??

always struck me as odd,

even that day, as

it didn't feel much different than

9 years and 364 days, really,

so i never knew what to say.

now i know what to say,

so i repeatedly tell people that

every day of my life is a New Year.

they sip and dance and hug and kiss

and i am left to wonder how they celebrate

the other 364 New Years Days of their lives

every calendar,

but of course they don't celebrate at all

except for one sad and awkward day,

yet I, somehow, am the strange one.