every Christmas
I brace for impact
I steel myself against the
inevitability of
falling
for you
it happens
every
single
year
no matter how I prepare
or swear
that this year
I'll be good
I'll be careful
I'll put my heart in that box
that I say you can't reach
but each time you find
a way in with that smile
that you wear just for me
and
I
fall
helplessly
endlessly
into snow and love
into Christmas lights and butterflies
into carrying that confession in my pocket
wrapped and bowed
polished and practiced
prepared
unused
year
after
year
as I brace myself for the impact
of your rejection
as I steel myself for the possibility
of your reception
as I face, head on, the prospect of
falling
for
you
just like the snow
before climate change
just like an ornament dangled
too close to the edge of the bough
just like my now-slipping mind
into madness
just like santa and his sleigh
in the sky
just like your eyes slipping
into that look just for me
like the tree chopped
too close to the edge of its trunk
they call timber on my heart
as it
falls for you
confession in my pocket
I wait for our next meeting
when I'll decide whether to give you
your Christmas gift
or
to continue to give you
the blissful gift of not-knowing
of perpetuating this ruse
that my love for you never
involved falling
that I haven't been falling
for eleven years
that I won't continue to fall
for the foreseeable future
my gift to you is the time until I confess
or if my courage wilts, as it has
year
after
year
well, then my gift to you is ignorance.
YOU ARE READING
poetry
PoetryA collection of my poems from daily writing. #1 in blackoutpoetry (1/20/21) #1 in dailypoetry (1/20/21) #1 in stanza (12/15/20)
