Christmas Eve.
at this time tomorrow evening,
lots of people will be eating
Christmas dinner.
all during the day
they will slave over hot ovens,
making roasts, baking hams,
simmering stuffing, mashing potatoes,
preparing crudites and salad
and desserts like pies and Christmas cookies,
and they will work to get the tree
to look just right for the guests,
and they'll make sure lights are up
and blinking, and wreaths are hung
and nutcrackers stand at arms,
and then their guests will arrive,
and everyone will sit down
to a beautiful Christmas dinner together
around a table so crowded with food
that Aunt Marge can't find a place
to put the gravy.
some families will talk about the birth of Jesus
and Mary and the wise men and the barn,
and some won't.
some families will have three kinds of meat
and two kinds of potatoes
and a partridge in a pear tree,
and others won't.
some families are small, and some are larger,
and some fill the empty spaces, and some
will have members present they have never met,
and some families are four people
and a dog
and a cat
and candles
and a wood floor
and they will sit around a table
enjoying each other's company.
i don't want Christmas.
i don't want a big flashy dinner
or wreaths or rolls or pastries
or twelve dishes of this
or a turkey for a centerpiece.
i just want that last part about
enjoying each other's company,
because tonight i had dinner
with my family,
and even though we are
five people
two dogs
some dust bunnies
a recently passed hamster
i didn't feel what i wanted to feel with them.
from the outside,
other people's families are ideal to me.
those four people
and the dog and the cat
and the candles and everything
might give me a feeling, but i can't figure out
if that feeling is family
or just envy.