By the time I’m eighty, I will have learned
that lesson I keep having to learn again, how
diving into the deep waters of friendship before
I’ve tested with a toe will get me the grit
of disappointment for my efforts. A new year

has begun, with a promise to develop new writing
habits in the gift of uninterrupted time in a silent
space, where I can catch stories that float in
on the ethers, available to anyone who wants
to record them. By this time next year, I will have

wrought the design I see now through a fuzzy veil.
I will have broken through a wall I built before
my first decade ended. I will have come out
the other side where the light beams bright
and diffuses with the scent of lemons.
                        

What looks like the silhouette of a cityscape
is the shadow of a carrier ship at sea,
its shadow projected long and tall
by the spotlight of a low winter sun.

At dawn, the sun behind me, my shadow too
is long and tall, slender as I hope to be again,
though never lanky or athletic. I’m fasting
every day. One meal keeps me nourished

while I eat the years of words I might take back,
surprised by what I’ve said. I’m swallowing
the blurts I didn’t hold in, eating hurts I’ve
certainly inflicted. This decade’s nearly over,

a time for reflecting on my shadow. To fast
is to discover obsessions, pathways
of the mind—a maze, a labyrinth
of tunnels. Where is that tasty morsel

of wisdom among my many blunders?
My long shadow surfaces as hungers.
                        

	I have made the executive decision to leave 
	my Christmas tree up year round because
	it makes me happy. Add it to the list of things
	my kids can discuss with their therapists
	when they get older. —Erika Orloff

She leaves the Lenox bowl with holly
at its center within reach for lunch salads
every day, wears her fleece slippers 
all year. Once she swore to abstain
from buying books, missed their arrivals
like gifts, and so resumed the extravagance.

Naps are a treasure she hands herself,
followed by the glee in waking sober and alert,
permission to experiment for hours with acrylics,
watercolors, textured papers, discovering
her own artistic signature. Silence makes
her happy—no bad news blaring on repeat,

no chatter of the well-intentioned friend
who likes rap, strobe lights, intense digging
into three decades’ old family strife.
She listens to the hum of the heater,
notes the refrigerator’s cycles with its
crash of ice cubes. How sweet to pass on

her collection of turtles to others, to see
the sudden grin when someone says,
I love that bowl, and she responds, Take it!
She’s still buying leather-bound notebooks,
lets them collect. They make her happy,
remind her she’s a writer, even though

she composes at a laptop. The scent of bean
soup simmering though the freezer is full,
heat from the wood stove though she isn’t cold.
Drapes open instead of closed against the winter.
She revels in the angularities of trees,
their costumes changing with the seasons.