I want to write something to you for the end of the world,
but I can’t peel this orange. It pushes back the seam between
thumbnail and thumb, and there it stays, and stings. Do you
know the feeling of stepping in a pool of slush in your sock feet
as you take off  your boots—when you are in the seam
between away and home, outside and inside, your public and
private selves? The slush is dirty meltwater from road-driven snow.
It is possible, entirely possible, that you have tracked lead, soot,
other poisonous particulates, into your kitchen as you stand by
the back door and worry this seam—as I worry so many seams,
am aware of so many seams. This is why I can’t comfort you, can’t
exalt your year just ending, can’t help you put on a brave face
and a party hat for the one that’s yet to come. We will all just have
to let it happen, count down and let it drop like the orange that it is.