the year that was

It's two years, more or less to the hour, since I had my first migraine in adulthood; since the end of May this year I've had somewhere less than two weeks free of migraine symptoms.

It was, nonetheless, a good year for me.

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The thing that has been rattling persistently around my head, the last few days, is Derek Walcott's Love After Love:

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.