The party lights beckon fire-bright and warm and though their call is not for me I come anyway, for old time’s sake. Creep and slide toward the cabin through the snow, my sluggish trudge-tracks elongated into deceptively elegant sweeps by nature, chemistry, and physics, an appearance of grace wrought by things entirely outside my control.

I press my forehead to frigid window pane, see the throats exposed in laughter, hear the clink of crystal, watch it all go foggy through my frosty breath on the glass, swirl a new view with the heel of my palm and smile. I am outside, though I know you’d welcome me in with open arms. I am content in my solitude for now, for a longer and more surprising stretch of time than ever before. I turn and walk back home.

At the computer I sit still as stone, the chaos of these last few weeks a beekeeper’s smoke hanging thick around my head, coating my nose, my lips, making me drunk, stunned, pleasant. My thoughts, my ideas, my blogs, my deadlines, all cooled and stalled like candle wax pooling at this  table, once set grand, now an exquisite wasteland. This rare moment of calm feels like an old friend I can’t quite remember and I blink, wait for words to arrive, send them away again.