Mochi New Year's Eve requires steamed rice and a willing granddaughter. You must take it out warm, still steaming, but not so hot it might burn hands or fingers. The girl listens, a boy's shirt covering her belly swelling from chocolates and peppermints eaten that morning, while her parents slept in, unaware of her habit to huddle alone on the couch, not even a blanket against solitude. All her questions get answered because grandmother loves to teach, loves to talk almost as much as the younger self she sees by her side, eyes focused as if they were searchlights, and she, a lost boat between the swells of the ocean. She pounds the rice, then gives granddaughter her turn without any prompting, the two of them one mind, one body, one space for an afternoon. Only time, she says, only time and patience. They watch the rice turn glutinous, sticky beneath their hands, each grain lost, absorbed by its brethren. This is our tradition, she says, explaining again, repeating the lesson. This is our celebration. Someday, teach your children.

We are far away She leaves the house, yellow coat unzipped. He sees a mosquito, misplaced from the snow melting today. Syllables, soft syllables, not words. The mosquito flew awkwardly, off to his right. She lights a cigarette from the pack she hides in her car. A sweet, brown red burn at the end of her nose. Somnolence, when will it come? She asks him this. She laughs too. How lovely her teeth must be. The smoke spews from her nose, blows from her lips. He can feel the oddity of winter in the breeze. In the misted rain that floats down upon his coat. Grey fleece, black street, tall house. Tonight, chimes. Tubular bells. Music to be improvised in the touch of hands. The scent of hair, unwashed, closely held. Forever exists nowhere in time. That's what he says, and she repeats. Do you know how it is without anyone? Forever, my love. Forever. My love. Chimes. Bells. Wind. The cigarette is tossed to the ground.

Fortuna Standing at the top of the hill, the grass matted down, a swirl of stars overhead. A city roams the earth, under roiled clouds, its lights sparkling too bright for any star's glance. Blackness looms on the edges, for these are mountains at midnight, and the hill rests in the valley, and the girl rests her body, chest heaving, heart racing, muscles weary. Dogs bark. She hears footsteps on a dirt path. She runs, runs fast as a tired body can in the murk of a moonless night. Are they chasing? Are they gaining? Her legs tell her story. The wind calls her name very softly, very dryly. Her skin prickles, feels the cold in those words. There is nobody, and no city, and there is no nightmare behind where her feet touch. Dogs bark, but because they are lonely. Because they are too far away. She forgets where she is, why her lungs rasp. Her mouth cottons, her lips crack. Her pupils switch back and forth, back and forth large as gilded plates. Drowned by her heart beats, crickets still chirp in the roar of a river bulging red in her throat. Breathe in, out, in, out. She breathes through nose and mouth both. From the snow in her eyes, the low hum, she knows what the tower knows when it collapses down on itself. Dust rises. She falls and the dirt reaches up, the grass calls out. At the edges, naked, she appears like a ghost or a frost on the grass. Kiss, kiss. Leave her that. Turn out your lamp. Sleep in the wake that your city makes. The siren you hear is not meant for your ears.

Herring glow after death for a few days, when their green, pure surfaces turn blue, and their gills red, suffused with blood at the moment of death, searching for oxygen among a curse of gaseous molecules forever beyond their use. No one knows the reason for illumination. Alive, in their shoals, they're observed in the sun as a white, triangular shape in motion under the waves of the ocean. How many eggs are laid? How many are eaten at every stage of the life cycle? How few avoid the waste we leave, mutating the organs of those who survive. God loves each sparrow, but a fish? They have no hands to pray, no wings to soar, no throats to sing epiphanies. Life and death are their only gifts, and, if left alone on the killing ground, uneaten, a slender light reminding us who has dominion.

In the nave

smoke swings from the chain

a priest chants his name

and children sing

Hallelujah! Hosanna to the highest! under windows, beautifically stained.

Each head bows hesitant, penitent, full of doubt.

Gloria, in excelsis deo!

fills the chapel with voices driven

by what's revealed

as pure emotion from the pews, the wood still glowing

from polish applied the previous evening. From above

(though that is a convenient dictum)

a spirit comes to join all the kneeling,

restless children, silent men

and silent women, their pious, unseeing eyes pointed away from the ceiling.

In the hush before repentance is accepted,

in the youngest faces

a dove makes its apearance

wings full spread, offering

a Christmas Eve benediction. Later, mourning will fill them with passion when they return to lives lived in other locations, on other occasions.

But for now, peace, that most joyous illusion,

deserves to keep them

omniscient

for one winter's segment,

for one simple season before it must leave them.