New Year's Eve

A woman on a leather couch
clenching her husband’s dog tags
realizes time is falling
from the clock beside her.
She writes letters to herself
to be read in the new year:

Today I will not be alcohol’s slave.
My children will have a mother again.

Freeze tag was their favorite game:
their children scrambled around, laughing;
they dodged Mom and Dad.
Kindergarten, second grade, fourth grade...
years drunk up in the loneliness.
Her children dodge her still, 
but without a smile.  
She misses freeze tag.

What will she do with the years given?
Soccer games, birthday parties, graduations...
before her children become a memory.