Ornaments

In the family room we sit on a warm brown couch,

Christmas heat nearly singeing still-green needles,

in a house where the rooms are always too cold

for grandparents, frail and loved.

I am listening as Uncle Bill brags about

Danny and Model UN, Noah and AP Chemistry,

Mom asks someone to pass a slice of pie, please,

Gran Rie compliments Aunt Maureen on the nice chardonnay,

and I am listening to love, love glowing out

of warm swirling ornaments, and I want more than anything

to stuff them into my mouth, their joy and their color,

I want to swallow them shard by effervescent shard,

jaw crunching up down bone china teeth cutting into

leaden silver glass and gluey sparkles,

a mortal metallic rhapsody.

I want to feel warm crimson trickle into pink gums and

in the cracks between my teeth,

down my tongue down the ruby throat

that doesn’t feel like my own.

I want something alien to strangle silence,

to mutilate me into a breathtaking empathic and

instead I sit in that stifling family

room mute, smiling and furious

at those innocent hollow globes that will not transform me,

that will climb back blameless into quiet cardboard boxes,

and at the end of the evening I will shatter one on the floor

by accident.