Instead of swiping through a photo collection with the caption “Lately!” or “2025,”
here are six thoughts from the week between Christmas and New Year’s.
Peppermint spirits in my coffee. Arranging my mother’s fresh-baked cookies on her dessert table: Earl Grey shortbread, cranberry almond biscotti, dark chocolate–chocolate chip. Realizing, shit, the paper doilies on the table were meant to go under them, so rearranging everything all over again, without complaint.
A thick strip of soft pink with an electric red halo divides the grayest clouds from the palest yellow. I’m annoyed with responsibilities that ought to receive my gratitude. As I empty the dishwasher, the sky reflects lavender against the lake. My brain keeps collecting open loops: unanswered texts, calls I need to make, a new year at work, the quiet pressure to do better somehow. The anxieties move like ants, efficient and tireless, carrying crumbs of my attention away.
We’ve pushed the bed to the sliding glass door again so we can wake up in the sunshine. Tonight, though, I’m more entranced by the moon glowing between jagged branches against the most perfect evening sky. There should be toasted marshmallows, I think, as we get into bed. Our skin feels new against one another. “Isn’t this house like a treehouse?” I say, looking outside. I could never bear to leave it, even with all of its troubles.
Standing near Curtis Hixon Park. It’s warm, but there are ice skaters down below. “I bet you’re annoyingly good at ice skating.” A hand reaches for the curl of my hair. We walk through the Christmas Village in seventy-degree conditions, the twilight sky lined with the silhouettes of the University of Tampa’s minarets. I’m pleased with this last indulgence of lights strung above us and all around us. When we order the “Sleigh All Day” cocktails, I’m more pleased.
Oh the questions I’d ask
live on the tip of my tongue
but I’ve learned better.
This isn’t resigned dignity,
quite the opposite.
“I am so tired of being sad.”
With tears streaming against
the softest organic cotton.
I couldn’t breathe well the next morning.
My body felt as if it were made of rocks and stone.
So I dragged it to a workout
and beat it up more.
Now the wetness on skin is a choice,
not a burden.
Standing in my mother’s kitchen washing dishes, listening to laughter and my parents’ voices in the dining room, crying with happiness to Edelweiss. I’ve heard it said you won’t know the love your parents have until you have children. If you were born a highly sensitive soul, I disagree.
Thoughts?