Every man was a weapon. I, a vegetarian turned cannibal to survive their machetes and unzipped denim.

What does it mean when the dream version of a gentle lover from your past hunts you with a knife and a Bible

in a war-torn country? Who can you trust in a kidnapping when everyone giving you orders—even the one begging you to trust them,

eat the plum you’re supposed to feed them but hide the pit—are men? In the dream, I eat fried octopus, and I like it. In the next dream,

I am unbearable and unhinged. I cannot hold my tongue back from its urge to mock and trill, my throat from spewing its song vomit of improvised musicals—so one-note and limited in vocabulary, but a songbird all the the same. I am made of maybe and almost, saving all my finish lines for overdone daydreams and underdeveloped poems, but I can entertain myself for hours and long weekends with only my words and imagination. I’ve lived such a fortunate, average life, I have to rely on secondhand sorrow for a good cry, someone else’s someday-maybes to convince myself to stay. My seasonal affection disorder never really goes away, which is to say, I can burn like the last candle on the longest night of the year and blizzard in July. I am heart-shaped marshmallow twinkling in a coal eye. I am a broken clock refusing to be abandoned. I am setting down the minutes in my own time, never caging the barn swallows and loon songs that bloom like arias from their seeds.

after after Kate McCallister in Home Alone

Cinnamon stains for life, so tip it over, wet your hands, coat your fingers in the umber, and trace me from freckle to freckle so I become a sky of constellations on nights when the moon hides her face from the stars. There’s a fine line between poet and muse, and the dark laid out like a sequined cape on snow skates right down the middle. If the perks of long train rides are setting albums to the shifting countryside or tucking into a Victorian gothic novel, the perks of longer nights are more hours to dream of sun. More time to catch the starlight beading in a metallic tang on my skin and seal it in a jar before it vanishes into dawn’s dull grays and watered down tangerine. I’d live in winter’s oil fields forever if it meant holding onto these auroras, these death lamps, this lunar lantern in my palms for a thousand graves and thousand and one lifetimes.

after Mary Oliver

Every morning unfolds itself, first in strips of charcoal linen,

​        then swaths of slate, gauze of gold.​        The great unwrapping.

And I don’t want to get out of the bed that has cocooned our body

heat—and the dog’s—into a furnace, ​        but there is the kettle to warm,

the gingersnap Chai tea for tongue to try.

​​        The poem will not write itself!

I’ve been reading about shadow and evil in fairy tales and greeting mine

after Ellen Griswold in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

So let’s cry out our pine needles into the carpet. Take advantage of the longest night of the year and swap our conscious for shadows—who can tell God from a devil in the dark? The stars blink out. A mouse stirs just to prove a point. Roaches scurry to the bulbs to subvert the plot. No heartbreak’s killed me yet, but morning might if I don’t take the snowy path home and dilute my dreams with fire— my unconscious the only safe place to keep a flame burning from dusk to dawn. I would dampen my clothes and succumb to the cold if it meant I could escape the slow agony of a mall store’s ten-track Christmas playlist, become a ghost, and haunt you year-round with Mariah Carey and Wham!. If you’re not miserable, are you even whole? I am a sleet storm of sorrow, and it’s not even the solstice. The best of myself is yet to come.

after Love, Actually

Tilting your head away from the sun to greet your shadow like a long lost twin. The moon is a silver ornament, an old lover’s name you can’t stop calling out in the dark. A mug of tea can fix everything—or at least, makes morning reading a little more cozy, tongue a ballroom of twirling ginger, cinnamon, blue cornflower gowns. The first snowfall is a slow dance in the oven bulb of midnight. The wind searches for a weakness, but you did your due diligence: the boots, the coat, the yellow mittens, all good money spent. You’re running out of time to spend it all in the past. Sweep this year right under the rug and stamp on it. Zip and tie your armor. Lose yourself in winter’s froth. You have such a beautiful life to live.

Coughing Up Tinsel & Crystal Flakes by the Open Fire I Saw Mommy Burying Santa Beneath the Snow Baby, It’s Cold Outside, But I’m Safer in the Blizzard Chronically in Love (but Only Under the Mistletoe) O Naked Tree (Let Your Freak Flag Fly) Lips Like Agony & Cranberry Velvet It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like a Crime Scene One More Dose of Eggnog and Xanax Handing Out Presents Wrapped in Secondhand Prose Black Ice, Blacker Hearts Jingle All the Way (Out of My Responsibilities) Laughter & Cheer Swells (with Spiked Tears & Seasonal Affective Disorder) O Holy Marijuana Cross! All I Want for Christmas Is Silent Nights & a Lobotomy

after Iris in The Holiday

And I’m not even playing the best friend. I’m a background extra, a passerby across the street from a coffee shop window, a grey-clad office cog hidden from the nose down behind the boundaries of her cubicle. If snowfall is a confession, I’ve been holding in a blizzard of alone time, lights off, avoidance, if only. For god’s sake, if only I were more brave! If only I were snowflakes and starlight, self-portrait of a dining table center piece, a thing that doesn’t need fixing! It was a game all along, and I was playing the thimble when I should have been the race car. For god’s sake, tear loose the unopened letter! Burn the things that took me from me: selfish man, corporate conga, realists sucking the lore from my palms like fairy tales are poison, my fingers the wounds. For god’s sake, hold the embers carefully in both hands! Ignite them with the waxing sun, and see what birds fly back!