I don’t know what to say to J., so
I just say, It’s a new year. Frost everywhere.
The branches go on holding
the cold while I and everyone I know
blink into our hangovers. After the countdown
we toasted without really saying
what to, but it felt true. Just lifting
our glasses towards each other in the strewn
light, that clumsy ringing, or ringing
in at least. Like that was all
it took, a slight clink into fullness.
S. and I didn’t dance all night,
and I was glad. My dress too short anyway
to raise my arms or shimmy much. Once
I drove through fields, and like always
they widened in the wind broke into gold waves
or green. And I thought for sure any day now I’d happen
upon my own new self somewhere
out there. Once after three beers I wasn’t afraid
on an airplane. Once I said to an almost
love, You are my very best friend. Or
I would have, or should. Sometimes it’s enough
to just stand near the dance floor and watch
curls loosen. Other times I tried to look
like I was looking for someone above their pretty heads.
Silly me, I keep thinking. R. held my wrist,
drunk and told me I looked beautiful
I think I can’t quite remember. But B. and I
poured each other more
champagne, and when I spilled all over
my hands, we just laughed like she knew me
so well, and I thought it
again. It’s so cold today I can hear
everything, and everything is being very quiet
now. My headache is worse than expected, but
I always get carried away like this in crowds and new
clothes, and when someone I didn’t know offered
me a smoke I took it because
outside was thin and still and slightly tinted orange
by streetlight and fog. Silly me.
But it’s a new year now, and the sky is so clear
it might really mean it this time. I mean
I know I said this before, but there is frost
everywhere. I’ve never seen anything so careful.
