It is a cold night in the city, a night full of wandering around dirty slush mazes, feeling the wind blow up our legs no matter how carefully we layer and bundle, bracing ourselves for more snow and ice and bad news. It might be a paltry gesture to fight back by looking at these sunflowers, which I found at the farmer's market in Eureka Springs during my time in Arkansas last summer, but it works for me: those flowers, those scallions, those herbs, even that yogurt, they all bring me back to a day in late June, when the air was warm and wet, when bees the size of soybean pods looped through the branches of the mimosa tree outside my bedroom window, when I was awakened every morning by the ridiculously beautiful perfume of those fuzzy purple mimosa blossoms, when I was expected to spend the day writing and that's exactly what I did, when the day was full of beauty and the future was full of bright and promising things.