Tasting Notes for Solitude

The pinot grigio is the colour of nothing,
water pretending toward yellow,
and I pour a second glass
before the first one's even finished.

Today the fields are supposed to bow.
Somewhere a first sheaf gets cut and lifted like an offering,
someone braiding wheat into a loaf
shaped like a body, breaking it while it's still warm
so everyone gets a piece of the first harvest.

I have no wheat. I have no body
but this one, folded into a kitchen chair
a room that used to hold two people
and a bottle that lasted longer
because we split the weight of drinking it.

The wine is thin on my tongue,
green apple, wet stone, the label says,
tasting notes nobody wrote
for a Wednesday afternoon, for a woman
counting how many glasses make a ritual
out of just being unwitnessed.

Outside, the light is doing that August thing,
going gold and stretched too early,
the whole year already tilting toward harvest
though nothing here has ripened.
I keep refilling because the glass is a kind of company,
it needs me at least as often as I need it.

Somewhere there's a long table,
groaning with bread and butter,
people thanking something
for what the ground gave freely.
I lift my glass to the empty chair across from me
and say the blessing anyway,
and the wine goes down
pale, and easy,
and none of it fills a single thing.