I put out the Santas and the tinsel tree, and bought flowers on Christmas Eve.  I found some music on the radio, and stayed off Instagram.  There was a floor lamp at the thrift store, exactly what I wanted.  My friend brought over cherries and cold, rare roast beef – and went home in fog that only Rudolph could navigate.  With just 12 minutes to spare, I drove to the store for a couple of things I forgot.  The streets were empty.  And then, like everyone, I was heading home.

The roses bloomed on Christmas, just as I hoped, and the clear blue sky chased the fog away.  Santa came. He always does.  My people made sure of me, and the boys got their stocking stuffers and money.  By eight p.m., it was over.  Together, Santa and I let out a sigh of profound relief – and climbed into bed for our long, winter’s nap.

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, when they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky. So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, with the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too. – Clement Moore

We need the funk. – George Clinton

Flowers dried from other Sundays, because the delivery truck was so late Saturday morning, there were no fresh flowers when I went shopping.  But the greenery sent it’s fragrant tendrils into the past, and gathered my little fragments of Christmas into a portal of memory and time.

I suppose I am getting accustomed to all the uncertainties – since I can’t let them go.  I told the close people how lonely I am, and they have helped make it better.  I accept that maybe I won’t stop crying for a while.  I had my heart set on so many hopes.  At least I got hurt from dreaming.  I didn’t think I could do that anymore.

But the soundtrack on Sundays is the funk.  And as long as you make my funk the P-funk, the desired effect is what you get.  Just be thankful for what you got.  Let me put my sunglasses on.

I couldn’t help falling in love, and I can’t help the loneliness I feel now – feel as a result of my heartbreak, though the loneliness was swelling inside, untended from long ago.  Probably lurking in my heart since the first time some parent or teacher declared something was wrong with me, and pointed out that I didn’t fit in.

While I was married, it was vital to pretend to myself that I wasn’t lonely, so I could keep imagining that things would still work out.  Because being with someone was supposed to solve being lonely.  I mean, how utterly broken and screwed up must I be, to feel lonely with someone who was supposed to love me?  That’s how I slipped into denial – building a hard, impenetrable barrier between me and loneliness just by looking the other way.

But along with actually feeling love, and feeling desired, and then the physical pain of losing that future, the companion of loneliness returned.  Feeling no heart is attached to yours, knowing there is no one asking themselves how you are doing that day.  Knowing that some part of you – the deepest part that feels most like yourself – doesn’t exist for anyone else anymore.  Lonely.

Denying my loneliness, cutting it off from my self, was part of how I misunderstood the kind of love I had a right to hope for.  Loneliness hurts, but I can’t go back to the emptiness of pretending, either.

Failure, disappointment, heartbreak, loneliness. My little plateful of broken dreams.  If I don’t tend them, who else will?

This was not the life I expected, or thought I was making.  I have heard of plans and goals, yes.  But no matter what attainment you covet, I think you only know afterwards what you’ve made.  When it’s too late to discover anything besides the forces you couldn’t see at the time.  Your own darkness, unquestionably.  But also the persistent shape of yearning and fulfillment – and that old devil, Hope.

Life is what I’ve done.  What I’ve made, is all told mainly by the losses.

To have love rejected.  There really isn’t any other wound.