“It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through”

The Poem

What The Living Do - Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

The Beverage
Wine Someone Else Picked

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Well, technically now it is very early Monday morning. Zero dark Monday morning.

A crushing time of year, I have often found. Not because of my seasonal affective disorder -- I have the fancy lamp to bask in. Not because I find the holidays hard -- I really don’t. Crushed, instead, because I feel my heart softening in the face of nostalgia and twinkle lights and candles and cookies and warm mugs and sweaters and big coats and earnestness. No other time of year feels so open to our earnestness. So, like my Grinchiest self, I feel my heart growing every December. Just enough more to let it get broken again and again and again. I am, indeed, living. Yearning. And yes, I want more and more and then more of it.

I am hungry for life, thirsty for the world, starved and parched and begging for more. More love, more life, more reality, more people, more more more earnestness. I don’t think I will ever be satisfied. I don’t think I am supposed to be satisfied. I can get theological about it. But instead I will make it about a beverage.

I’m a person who cries a lot, but not very many have seen me cry in the last few years. I like to keep my crying to the car and my bed. I am not great at asking for help or support or being vulnerable, generally, so sometimes, I like to just lean into other people’s choices for me. Like when someone else buys the wine or orders the appetizer or plans the party.

Tonight, I went to a dinner and brought truly nothing. (Because my roommate brought the absurd panettone I bought at Costco yesterday.) It was freeing. I ate the food other people made. Drank the wine someone else bought. I don’t know what the wine was. I liked the label. It tasted good enough. It didn’t matter. Someone else picked it. I just poured myself the glass.