Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.

Atkinson’s line frames the turning of the year as an intentional act of release. The “silent limbo of the past” suggests that what is over cannot be revised and need not keep clamoring for attention. By calling the year “imperfect,” he normalizes failure, regret, and incompletion as inherent to lived time rather than personal defects. The imperative “Let it go” turns reflection into a moral practice: acknowledge what happened, then relinquish it. The closing “thank God that it can go” adds a note of gratitude for time’s forward motion—an almost theological relief that endings are built into the human calendar, making renewal possible.