Last night’s getting lost walking around our own neighborhood in a snowstorm  —

because none of us had our glasses on, 

critiquing varied holiday light and blow up displays and mistaking one yard scene for Santa’s coffin and gravestone, 

considering walking straight through a stranger’s house Ferris Bueller-style after being surprised to find ourselves at the unhelpful end of a very long cul-de-sac, 

wet mask encrusting with ice as my pockets fill up with snow, 

staying up late (PAST 10 PM), 

dusted Jack Russell in rust-orange coat,

yelling “CAR” and “GAME ON” and employing the buddy system,

under the last full moon of our bloated zombie year,

and it’s like cocaine is falling from the sky for how exhilarated it makes me but exponentially more exciting in that it won’t likely ruin my life,

and I can’t stop thinking about Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God and her wrenching depiction in retrospect of the last snow and not fully appreciating it before anyone could know it would be the last snow and then I wonder if I’ll have to keep moving north until all winter is over forever,

a friend saying, “I may be succumbing,”

feeling both ancient and newborn having barely wiped my eyelashes before they’re covered again,

a dancing blow-up snowman with a Halloween skeleton still hanging from the tree over his head spinning in the gusting snow and aren’t we all just walking around with skeletons hanging idly over our heads,

cackling into the wind because it hasn’t yet bested us and we still have snow and friends and a new year is imminent

— slid in a scant 50 hours before the deadline — sorry — “lifeline” (thanks, Rod), to clinch a respectable ranking on my Impossibly Best Hours of 2020.