We never get everything on our lists:
one year a chill sidled up from the coat
of ice on my lawn like a drunk girl
at a coming of age party
and wouldn’t let go.

I no longer need to scratch
myself raw with holly and ivy and slowly
the raked skin smoothes over.
With the holiday goes the Godot familiarity
of the hangover, the grudging, smoky bowl.

I’ve suffered those days to dissolve
into the deep of an upturned hat
set down on a bed; my mouth shut ‘til midday,
the family skirting my scurvy self.

* * *

Sleep was never too long
except when it clouded up
like water in Pernod.

We rolled into the comforter all elbows
and legs and free-floating down.

This was alcohol-tripping
I think aloud
sprawled on a mattress
in a room of unpainted drywall
and splintering random board, under a skylight
under a freezing night’s stolid eyes;

tripping like in the story of the couple driving
through a sparkling desert
where something of themselves
that I have forgotten was revealed.