more.

The year begins as they so often do, with fits of cleaning, sorting through a dilapidated closet and building bags for the Salvation Army shop, scrubbing refrigerators and writing lists for improvement. But when dinner comes around, cliched early January burning muscles gasping for oxygen in my legs, I decide to burn all my fireworks at once, serving up long-saved lamb and homemade wine: a meal awaiting an occasion so special it would never come. I think of my grandmother, how she served every coffee, every water, in a vessel from the fancy cupboard: her grandparents crystal, her wedding china. Because how you spent your days is how you lived your lives and would you not want it to be magic. She had a laugh that sparkled in those glasses.

After dinner, I read a dead woman's final love letter and think that more may be the most beautiful word we can taste on our tongues, not drunk with immortality, but as beings ever desirous, ever longing, ever curious. I cried over her sweet sentiments, over the welcome reminder that while life is often not fleeting, it does end, and we'll never have had enough when it does. The year is new, the page unwritten, but we must savor each moment regardless. The wine is delicious. My grandmother lives no longer.

I consider tattoos across my rib cage.

Vow to make 2018 not a year without fear
But the year I am fearless.