Opening, Again

"The feet of the new sufferings
                followed the old...."
                                           ~ Jane Hirshfield

Some burn the old year, recalling the many forms 
of misery it wrote, month after month after month.
Others choose to lavish it by arranging twelve 
pleasures on a plate, emblems for sweetness 
and foraged light—gold of Satsuma oranges, yellow
dragon fruit, wine-colored plums; soft mouthfuls 
of pear, the pomegranate, even if it tried to trick 
a girl into loving only the cold and dark. If you believe
what you eat can make you strong, then you might think 
honey should never cross your lips, that feasting on delight
might bring down a blizzard of wrath so you fail to admit
contentment. And so I am trying to remember how,
when water cascades down the throat, you feel it even in 
your bones; how it finds its way, runs alongside your blood.