Status Updates From Winter Solstice: An Essay

They were the elec-tric kind, with flame-shaped bulbs on top of plastic candlesticks. Sometimes I stood at the window in my parents' bedroom on the second floor and waited for a car to come, and as it neared the house, I rolled the ridged wheel of the switch to light the candle so that someone in the car might see the light come on, and in that, feel delivered good luck or cheer, a flashing sense of human presence..

I am up early enough to see the stars. The porch light on the house across the street shines bright enough to bring shadows into the room. The neighborhood is still. The rattling newspaper deli ery van has not yet been by, the morning news not yet tossed on stoops. Frost not dew, the grass is stiff. A woman scrapes ice off her windshield and I feel it in my teeth. Mothwinged darkness opens itself widest now.