Christmas
A poem
The law divides kids up at Christmas,
Thanksgiving, and summers
“Holiday possession” is what it’s called
My favorite Christmas song is River
a place to skate away on
No shortage of people loved me:
there were enough tamales and cheese balls and pie
presents tagged with my name under each tree,
dueling football games and open rocking chairs,
my own hand-embroidered stockings on both sides
Yet inside me ticked a timer counting down
to belong to the other one;
I owed
pre-allotted hours
I read their eyes too:
that gifts were under the tree
despite the empty accounts,
leaving nothing,
nothing for the new year
I watched him break a glass
in his hand and rave, screaming in front of twenty people,
and I, too small to escape
or leave without him,
hid.
Another year I crouched eyeball to eyeball
with my eighty-six year old grandmother,
psychosis raving in her hazel eyes
where magic used to dance
Some years I leave my tree
in the back corner of my closet,
ignore the twinkling branches on the boulevard,
put earphones on in stores playing Bing or Nat or Ella,
wait for January second or third.
I talked to a young mother today
she needs to leave her husband
but he told her no, unless he agreed.
They live on the base in whose chapel my dad’s parents married in 1943, before deployment to the Rhineland
She senses the trap —
there is no winning.
Even if she escapes
the toddler and baby-to-be will be shared (loved)
but divided up;
they will tear open their toy guns and legos,
like I did my American Girl dolls and cowboy boots,
almost hearing an echo of the before
when the grown ups’ skin held in their grown up fears
from spilling around the tree and the presents and the after —
coloring Christmas, leaking into the snow, taking root in the frozen grass
through the springs that followed, summer bike rides
fall football until the next round of lights
debut on Main Street
and it’s Christmas again
