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Todd James Pierce

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My Second Christmas Eve

All too soon, this world will take
our bodies and return us
to the state of children, learning to walk
and speak in full sentences,
and stand with a pride we believe
is somehow ours.

I do not remember my second Christmas
Eve, but in grainy home movies I wear
a red night gown stitched with lace
and a satin cap which rises from my head
then folds on itself like a Dutch rabbit’s ear.

I am a happy child,
or so it seems, as I sit in my mother’s lap
and wave at the camera. I have not mastered
the art of walking, so I teeter
across the room, a tipsy old man
trapped in the body of a child.

I do not understand Christmas,
but know some gifts are for me.
I would like to open them,
especially the one in red paper,
but my mother holds me
in her lap, her arms roped
around me. She kisses
my fleshy forehead and smoothes
baby hair from my face.

We do not open gifts
on Christmas Eve, but wait
until morning. Instead we eat
spiral cut ham glazed with honey
and play board games,
like Chutes & Ladders, which
I almost understand.

I have often wondered
what I felt back then,
when I did not have a sense
of myself, fear and desire
foreign countries floating
in a distant sea. I knew love
only as a feeling, not as effort,
and believed only good things
lay in my future, like my mother’s kiss
and a rocking horse left under the tree.

 

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