With prisms of light and flickered gilt reflections to delight your eyes on the morning of a new year.

If I was my Lover I would romance her eyes.

I put her to bed early because she was too sleepy to ring in the new year. While the world was drinking away the last of 2018 I let her dream it away. Then I woke her with whispered wonder at the dusting of secret snow sprinkled upon us as we slept. Every elevated surface aglow. Aglitter in the hallowed hush just before the bird choir begins. Come see, my bedhead beauty. Behold this crystalline swathe before it shapeshifts to puddles and drips. The sun will rise soon to lick it away like the remnants of an earthen eclair.

And so we gaze. Fingers against the chill of the window. Delicate breaths to preserve the spell. Until I sense her thirst. I keep the lights low, as she likes. Make her coffee. Ignite tiny candles in sparkling vessels. Settle her into her favorite chair to embrace the infancy of her next year with the cup of kindness from the Scots’ song. Listen for murmurs of whatever she might need or want and imagine how she might have it. Her desires made sacred on the altar of my love.

She is Me.

— Mercy