Recently, as the year piles into its final form, time folds in on itself like a book that’s been crushed. The pages condense too tightly, one on top of the other and are creased out of place. In trying to stretch the pages out, it’s easy to get tangled in the myths and memories and to forget which page I’m on. Trying to tie the year up in a plush velvet bow, I confuse the words written in this chapter of December with the one before or the one 2023 years before.