“I this day on this occasion drank a glasse of wine, which I have not professedly done these two years, I think, but a little in the time of the sicknesse.”

I sat that afternoon at a table where the air was thick with the smell of new christening and old acquaintance, yet my mind was elsewhere, heavy with the cost of guests who come only to spend my coin. It pleased me then to lift the glass, a clear red wine, for I had sworn off such pleasure for two long years since the sickness took hold of our city. To taste it again was a small rebellion against the fear that kept us all so tight-fisted, a moment where the body remembers its need for comfort even when the soul trembles at the thought of what might follow.

Tell me now, friend, when you have gone without your meat or your drink for some hard reason, do you not also feel that sharp pull toward the cup, that secret desire to break your own rule? I ask you not to judge my weakness in taking that wine, but to tell me if you too find that the things we deny ourselves most often are the ones we crave with the greatest hunger when the door is finally opened.