A Straightforward Gratitude List

For the way the Christmas cactus always, somehow, knows

For the way my dog groans when she flops (or turns in her hours of flopping); for how this expression of contentment sounds like irritation to the untrained ear

For the people who fawn over her when we go for walks, so predictably it’s like there’s a word bank: she’s so pretty she’s so sweet she’s so soft

For the not-sweet smell of her breath

For the herbal smell of the steam that rises from the sauna I visit in winter

For learning, by picking up a coffee table book inside the spa where the sauna lives, that its name is the Finnish word for both the steam and the dipper-pour of water that creates it

For living in this place of green green green, a bacchanal of water

For the two times this year that I drove to the Alvord Desert — hours and hours of empty; signal-free miles of dirt roads — only to find that both times, for different reasons, I was unwilling to spend the night there

For how it feels to spend a night at home

For the quiet of my neighborhood despite its closeness to busy areas; for its total trafficlessness after 10 p.m.

For the grand magnolia tree across the street, first to bloom and first to bare, undaunted by the pace of its neighbors

For the carpet of pink-white it lays across the sidewalk

For the mist and rain and even the darkness, at least right now; for the allowance toward reprieve that is winter

The way the Christmas cactus always, somehow, knows

For the woman who works at the post office I frequent with my QR-code returns or to buy a sheet of holiday stamps; how she looks at me with a kind of sad, shared understanding

For the clash of it, to be a wild animal who must live under fluorescent lighting; for the thrum of temporary blood in the rushed boredom of chores

For the whisper of the hot water heater, even as I lie in the bath, making more warm

For the Spanish I’ve finally learned just enough of to light up the face of someone who’d assumed the foreclosure of connection

For the way the dental hygienist, painting my teeth with varnish, told me it would stain the plaque so she could see where to polish: it’s a disclosing solution, she said, and I worry-stoned the words, wished for such a thing in another context

For the slowness with which the solutions disclose themselves, which is the process of living

For life

For you

For us