I came in through the gap under the front door, the one they packed with a rolled towel to keep me out, and still I found it: goose fat, cloves, something orange and burned at the edges, a candle guttering as I passed. They didn't look up. Twelve of them wedged around a table built for eight, elbows against elbows, holding still on purpose, holding each other's stories, holding grudges I could smell going stale under the gravy.
I lifted the edge of a paper crown off a bald man's head and he grabbed it back, laughing, pressing it down like it might fly to another country without him. It might. I would have taken it gladly. I take everything gladly and set it down somewhere that will never know where it came from.
Someone opened the back door to let the heat out and let me in properly, and for one breath I had all of it at once: the tinny music, a child's hiccuping cry, the older woman's perfume that she has worn since before any of these people were born, wine, wax, the wet dog by the radiator.
I carried a word out with me. It was somebody's name, said soft, said twice, the way you say a name when the person is right there and you just want to feel them answer.
They shut the door behind me. They always do. They gather and they wall it in and they stay, all of them in one warm box for one lit evening, believing the box will hold.
I am three streets away now, past the dark church, out over the fields, and the name is still on me, unraveling, given to nobody.
I never learned who it was for.