Above the city burning bright

This shortest day has been flooded with sunlight. I slept almost none of the night. The hinges of the year have felt rusted shut for a long time, but I can't pretend it hasn't still been swinging to the rhythm of axial tilt whatever once and future fantasies people like to frame themselves inside. Sidereal time does not care whether I still have to ask the contractors to mask themselves before they cross our threshold—strange guisers—to repair some small parts of our house. It was oddly, seasonally apropos. Happy solstice! If the sun can come back, why not the rest of us, at least once in a while?