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So I wake back up, attached to my desk with drool, and continue cooking. The steps from the office to the kitchen are few and terrible, and every light in the house is on. Usually this artificial keeps me up, but a bottle of wine can turn your many tables.

There are carrots and onions and celeries, fragments of wholes, chopped decently and with care. Bread lays out, drying. Salt and pepper, broth and an empty bottle. It almost looks as though I know what I'm doing. If you can read, you can cook, my grandmother told me. So maybe my culinary literacy is somewhere around the fourth grade.

I take up the knife, bad idea and I've got plenty. Things are still out of focus, I'm still packing this drool. The handle is slippery, a slight coating of butter, and what's to keep it from going across my wrist? What's to keep this sink from being my dying pool? Why did it take me so long to see the dark side of a holiday?

Things can't really wait 'til morning but I let them. Hunger will have to wait, like it usually does. I go back to my drooled desk and bring one more light into my eyes. I don't use this time for sleep. I'll spool slowly out activities that should take seconds, fill my hours with them, wait and regret and pick up the knife. But I'll eat, eventually. I always do.