Fifty-nine. I refuse. The New Year opens like an empty terminal lights on, no destination I agreed to. Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven. The clock is a machine that shaves. It strips the past for parts to build a future it hasn’t earned. You didn’t vanish. You left. Time adjusted immediately, filed you under before, kept working. Forty-two. I am not dramatic. I am a witness. The clock calls concealment healing. It measures the hollow beside me, the cold where a hand withdrew, and names it progress. Thirty-one. Stop. Choke the gears. Not for me alone but for rooms where love was revoked, where hunger has learned patience, where ticking outshouts reassurance. Nineteen. Do not advance the year while touch is rationed. Hope should not be rare. It should be bread heavy, broken, shared. Ten. I will not cross over on the backs of the abandoned. Let the celebration wait. Three. If you move, be human. Strip the numbers from the face. Let one be the only noise a click, nothing crossed. The world may rush. I remain.