I am powered by coffee each cold Midwestern morning. These days begin and end with the punctuation of a fall freeze. Out my window, with lace, the frost punctures the earth and for casualties, takes the leaves from the trees. My morning neighborhood is daily scented with new breakfast food smells. Today was pancakes, yesterday bacon, and tonight it will run wet with well cocktails.

This is the weather that calls dusty blankets out from the closet along with wool slippers. What the moths haven't eaten will keep us from freezing and hide our pale bodies beneath heavy folds. On the brown-patterned sofa we two sit together surrounded by Christmas lights hung prematurely, but lovely all the same. The kittens purr in our open laps and snuggle down into the crooks of our arms.

A record spins on the nearby turntable, James Taylor, Fire and Rain. The cloth-covered speakers, dredged from a basement in the 1980's thump the bass gently and add an aesthetic hiss and crackle. A lightbulb burns out, but it doesn't matter, we're already asleep.