Loosed in that strange, uncertain, shift between

death of old year and birth of next,

in this peculiar no-time

when, torn between casting back to the old year, in reflection,

or musing on the raw pristine page of the newborn before us-

already burdened with countless, weighty, hopes and dreams-

then the grey shadow-creatures know to come calling,

in this hiccup of cycle, when we are vulnerable,

when they can lurk in unlit corners, spreading sadness and desolation

with their interminable, inescapable, cloying grey-mist

that soaks into every surface

through every pore

that smothers everything beneath its melancholic shroud-

when they can latch on – and bite.