I feel it every time I walk through you

For the first night of Hanukkah, rushthatspeaks and I drove eleven hours from Boston to the D.C. metro area. We ate the sandwiches we had packed at a rest stop in Connecticut, discovered Kate Pierson's "Throw Down the Roses" (2015) on WVPH in New Jersey, and were directed by the GPS to drive three times across the bridge that used to be the Tappan Zee. My godchild ran out to meet us carrying in their arms a cat whom I had met only through the talkie window and accompanied by their boyfriend likewise. Two and a half years on from the last time I saw them, they are now an inch taller than I am and their hair is spectacularly toned violet through midnight blue. We had missed the timing on latkes, but had dinner of Peruvian chicken and plantains from Crisp & Juicy and talked for hours until everyone else peeled off for bed and we rewatched the pilot of Twin Peaks (1990–91). The Merritt Parkway snowed on us. spatch wrote me that he and the cats lit the first night's candle for peace.

When the rain, I see

For the second night of Hanukkah, I finally met in person my godchild's twelve-year-old Eastern box turtle, Mr. Slow.



I grew up hearing the stories of the Glixman turtles which my mother told to her siblings throughout their migratory, mid-century childhood. They carried their homes with them. spatch and the cats have lit the second night's candle for health.