What To Eat When Your Heart Is Empty

Golden foods: brioche, roast chicken, yukon golds, pumpkin curry, yellow tomatoes fat in the sun, olive oil, salted butter, sweet corn bread a little north of pudding.

Tea: Bracing black tea mellowed with milk. African rooibos tea sweetened with raw honey. Chai, peppermint, licorice. If times are really rough, honey vanilla chamomile.

Homemade hot cocoa with a shot of whiskey.

Foods that smell good; that wrap you in their scents like a fog of comfort: Cinnamon, baked apples, burnt cheddar, mushrooms cooking in butter, garlic, meat simmering all day in a bottle of wine, freshly ground coffee, chocolate, bread baking, red wine hitting a hot pan, truffles, tomato sauce, my mom's gingersnap cookies.

Macaroni and cheese. Grilled cheese with chili sauce. Nachos with cheese. Feta cheese sauteed in olive oil with lemon juice and artichoke hearts. Cheese.

Standing in the kitchen, stirring a pot.