December 2022

December 2022

The nights have it. They’re winning. They know it.

All the tokens stacked on their side of the horizon and we stay longer in their swing of the world than we would maybe care to.

It’s all in good fun though. I’m counting cards (the girl stacks mail, unopened, in every basket of the house). And I’ll take the time I have under the stars to be under the stars.

Nights are when the crafty work is done. When the stories are told. When the unread books, and the bowing shelves, and the empty journals quiet down and listen. Some stories we only act out: a girl in a twinkling house, a house in the snow, the snow in the woods, the woods in the night, the night in a waking world. And everything suddenly white. Soft. Cold. Clean.

This is a made up day, we didn’t have, on account of the nights being so long. A quilted one, built in pieces. A gift for the new year.

Dawn comes for me the wrong way around, and lights me up like a landscape in a claude glass. The girl finds both her slippers easily, and there are cinnamon buns in the oven. They do not burn.

The girl goes out in her winter coat while the mice have a private breakfast in the cupboard. All of us are warm, or on our way there. The girl’s red nose and cheeks are holding out, and we sit at the kitchen table together, pretending the wood stove is lit and she can’t see her breath.

We read and she paints and I hold very still, to not scare off the magic. To be an easy muse. And when we catch each other looking, in surprise, in assurance, we pretend we haven’t. We hold the laugh like an ornament--tightly, not to drop, but not tight enough to break.

We decorate ourselves in light. With baubles and branches too, but most importantly, light. So when the night comes again and the pond freezes over and pipes stop up, and the old stories get older, we are also a star. A warm one.

We’re a prize for the nights. They’re winning,

the apple house