'All through the summers and into January'
These are things I want to do in winter. Stay in bed until the sun is up. Gaze out the window with less purpose than a cat. There are no birds I’m watching, it’s just time passing by. When it snows, the air is clear and dark and crisp, and I watch the falling snow and think of nothing at all.
Read Icelandic fiction. I need to go over what I’ve already bought in previous years so I don’t buy duplicates. You and I both know this can happen very easily. I can’t remember if I lent Miss Iceland to E, or if I got it back, or not. I don’t remember seeing it when I alphabetized all my fiction. Mine, yours, ours. I still don’t know how to pronounce the author’s name correctly, but I like reading it across a page. Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir. In another life, I would have liked translating books, I think. Trying to figure out how to convey the author’s meaning as best I can in another language altogether. I wish you’d gotten a chance to read The Centre.
Write in my journal. You’d think this one would be easy, but it’s already the twelfth and it hasn’t happened yet. Even snippets of the day elude me at the end of it. But there are things I want to remember, even if they are small. Perhaps this evening I will try again.
Walk endlessly in the snow. It makes everything feel like another world, and I want to stay in that still and quiet world as long as I can.
Things I do not want to do in winter: wash the dishes. Vacuum all the dust that’s collecting in the corners again. Be in this new year without you.