Charles Warnke

Then there is a moment where my friend grabs his father’s hair at its roots and his father’s undamaged eye stops rolling in its socket…

This year, a dismissive and slightly apologetic shrug at that problem hasn’t sufficed for any of my or others’ purposes. Emails asking, “What’s next?” accumulate in my inbox and remain unanswered. I can’t bring myself to respond to affable requests for guidance.

The term “black ice” is a misnomer. Nothing about the thin layer of ice that forms on roadways when condensation from automotive exhausts freezes is black in any way. If black ice was actually black it would be less dangerous, because in cloaking the medians and texture of asphalt with a solid sheet of black it would provide drivers with a visual alert as to the imminent hazard awaiting them.

A girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder.

And yet, things will change. They won’t change today, or even tomorrow, but maybe on February 20^the, or in the spring, or on the third Friday in July. New Years is so bad for us because it demands revolution from an unwilling and unready vessel.