New Year

 I am seeing you in the broth again: 
 the best days are rising to the top 
 like good fats and clear onions.
 I almost bring down my tongue
  
 to taste, but I know it will only burn
 and take a week to heal, feeling numb 
 like static when I count the backs of my teeth 
 walking outside, brisk and alone
  
 this month, staying present but losing
 myself to sleep at night listing 
 those things you might have
 given me— red stones, the number three,
  
 steering— and I feel like a tourist 
 in my own strange city, leaning over
 a handrail and falling into the tigers
 to take a photo. I'll risk it to feel
  
 a rush of something, but I am not waiting for fruition
 unless it proves that time is a chord across
 a circle, or that the half-life of missing you
 is tonight's long dinner, where I lift the bowl
  
 again to my mouth and drink half, then half,
 then half, so as not to run it dry but instead
 to forget hunger. I don't always remember. 
 Your house was full of those summer drafts.