Christmas has been dismantled, the sheets and comforters washed and folded away. Floors are swept, chicken stock simmered, firewood stacked, ashes shoveled. So this morning, after an early yoga class, I'll trudge home and address the embryo manuscript. As I work I'll try to remember these lines from the Inferno:

But look down now and pay attention.
The river of our blood draws near.

I've been reading Morgan Parker's collection Magical Negro, which my son gave me for Christmas. She ends her poem "Who Were Frederick Douglass's Cousins and Other Quotidian Black History Facts That I Wish I Learned in School" with these lines:

Is this how I am supposed to feel?
Are you sure? How do you know?

The lines have been ringing in my head, clanking against the murky sinister plots of the Mary Queen of Scots bio I've also been reading, and with Dante, of course, and with my own stack of poems.

I hope I can figure something out.