Evergreen and Ever Dead [Wraith]
The wreath on the door is still hanging from last year, a ring of brittle green wired tight with wishful thinking and discount ribbon,
One stray bulb winks like a drunk confession on the porch, twitching in the wind, refusing to admit that the season is over yet again,
Your mother swears she will take it down tomorrow, like she swears she will quit smoking and stop calling your ex by the wrong name,
But winter loves liars, and the dead love patterns, and I keep catching you in the corner of my eye, where the garland sags like a tired vein.
Snow piles up like unmailed apologies along the drive, crusted gray, all the purity ruined by exhaust and the neighbor’s leaking truck,
I kick through it carrying another cardboard box of decorations, every step a crunch like bones in frosting, stupid plastic deer staring with dead eyes,
Inside the house the heat rattles through the vents, hot and dry and merciless, turning our breath into ghosts that don’t know they’re unemployed yet,
Your stocking still hangs on the mantle, fat with nothing but dust, and everyone pretends they don’t see it, as if grief is soot you can just wipe off your hands.
We string up lights around the living room window, those cheap LEDs with settings that flicker like a panic attack on a caffeine binge,
Your sister laughs and calls them festive seizure mode, and we all snort because the only other option is crying into the eggnog,
Outside, the reflection in the glass lines your absence up with the wreath outside, your invisible shoulders crowned in fake pine and faded berries,
You stand there for just a second, transparent and patient, like you’re late for a party that never ended, and I almost tell you to move your ghostly ass and help untangle the wires.
Carolers stumble past on the sidewalk, tuneless and too cheerful, their voices scraping along the siding like blunt knives wrapped in tinsel,
They sing about peace and mercy while arguing over who gets the solo, one kid texting behind the hymn book, halo lit by screen glow and falling snow,
You linger just beyond the porch light’s reach, a slim blur in the dark, mouthing different words along with them, lyrics you wrote me that one December we almost made it,
Back when we kissed under mistletoe taped to a smoke detector, both of us laughing, both of us pretending we weren’t already burning from the inside out.
In the kitchen the oven timer shrieks and the cookies die a second death, edges black, middles raw, a perfect metaphor nobody wants to admit is accurate,
Your chair at the table is “temporarily” stacked with junk mail and unopened bills, a paper barricade against saying your name out loud,
Your ghost leans there anyway, elbows resting on nothing, watching as I scrape another ruined batch into the trash and tell the room it’s fine, I meant to, it’s experimental,
You tilt your head like you used to when I lied, one eyebrow raised, grin half-daring, half-disappointed, the same look that dragged me back from every self-destruct except the last one.
The tree is fake but stiff with memories, every branch a wired limb holding glass or metal proof that we tried to be happy at least once per calendar year,
There is the bauble from the year we couldn’t afford gifts and wrapped the electricity bill as a joke, the year we lost power and spent midnight by candle,
There is the tiny frame ornament with your photo, red scarf, cheeks flushed, mid-laugh, caught between “take the damn picture” and “come kiss me already,”I hang it higher than before, out of reach of clumsy hands, as if you’re still shy about being seen, as if the dead can be embarrassed by bad angles and cheap lighting.
Midnight comes early in December and the walls shrink with it, shadows thick as old grudges pooling behind the couch and under the stairs,
I sit alone with a mug that should hold cocoa but holds something stronger, watching the wreath through the smeared window,
The wind pushes it hard until the hook creaks, evergreen ring tilting like a halo that failed inspection, a crown for a saint that never got approved,
You drift closer, face pressed to the glass from the outside, fogging it with breath you do not have, tracing a dumb smiley face in the condensation like it’s just another winter.
I tell you you’re late, that dinner went cold two years ago, that your side of the bed is now occupied by laundry and decisions I never made,
You shrug in that old flannel coat I buried you in, threads shredded by weather and regret, and the snow swirls through your chest like cigarette smoke,
You tap the glass once, twice, each knock synced to my heart, each beat stretched out like the pause before a bad punchline,
Then you point at the wreath above your head, fingers pale as frostbite, mouthing words I can finally hear through the window’s thin, shivering skin.
“We hung this the week I left the first time,” you say, voice slipping under the weather seal and into my ear with all the warmth of a freezer door,“You begged me to stay until New Year’s, called it a truce, said no fights under lights, no breakups near tinsel, no goodbyes with sleigh bells in the back,”I remember every stupid rule we made to keep the monsters outside, as if pain obeyed calendars, as if grief honored holidays, as if death took days off,
You smile, crooked and loving, and ask me how that worked out, and I laugh too loud, because you breaking the rules was the last honest thing you ever did.
The house groans, the pipes clank, upstairs the old floorboards complain like distant relatives, and the air thickens with cinnamon and unsaid apologies,
Behind me the family laughs in the living room, some holiday movie flickering across their faces, painting them in fake miracles and canned happy endings,
I sit here with your shadow and our wreath, the two of you locked together like a wedding ring and a noose,
This is our tradition now, annual haunting, you returning for one long midnight and me pretending I’m not waiting all year for the knock that never comes until it does.
I ask you if it hurts where you are, if time still matters, if you get bored listening to the same carols over and over from the other side of the drywall,
You tell me it feels like living in the last verse of a song that never resolves, the chords hanging, the singer holding breath until their lungs shake,
You tell me you stand by every door in this street that ever had a wreath and a fight behind it, watching couples swear this year will be different,
You say you almost envy them, not for their joy, but for the raw mess, the slammed doors, the slammed hearts, the way they still get to wreck each other in warm bodies.
“I tried to stay,” you say, “but I loved you like black ice under a fresh layer of snow, it was pretty and lethal and I knew you would step wrong sooner or later,”You reach through the cold and press that thought into my spine, and I feel it spread like cheap whiskey, burning and cheap and exactly what I ordered,
I want to scream that you could have stayed and we could have tripped together, landed in the same broken heap, shared bruises and low rent and loud neighbors,
Instead I just sigh and say you always were dramatic, and you laugh, and the porch light flickers, and somewhere the breaker flips itself twice.
The wreath finally gives up and falls, one last surrender, thudding against the door with a dull soft smack that sounds far too much like a body dropping,
Family noise spills from the hallway as someone goes to pick it up, cursing the hook, complaining about cheap hardware and gravity,
By the time I blink you have stepped into the space it left, a ring of invisible frost around your head, evergreen dust in your hair like confetti from a funeral parade,
You bow with mock theater, cracked hands over your heart, asking if I will dance with you just once more, one last holiday waltz for the road.
We don’t touch, not really, my fingers pass through yours with all the resistance of regret, but we move anyway, shuffling on the welcome mat that never saw you come home,
The wind hums some old carol off key, and we sway to it, two idiots at a midnight prom where everyone else already left,
Footprints smear across the porch as snow tries to cover them, failing, the marks too warm, too stubborn, too recent,
We dance until my toes go numb and your outline starts to glitch, head stuttering, body fading, like a scratched record spinning down to silence.
“Same time next year,” you whisper, voice thin as tinsel and twice as cheap, and I nod, because I am not done with you and may never be,
You back away into the dark, one step, two, dissolving into the shadows between the parked cars and the trash cans left out too long,
The only thing left is the faint ring pressed into the frost on the door, wreath ghost, circle of absence, a perfect loop of everything we never fixed,
Inside, someone calls my name to cut the pie, and I turn, carrying your chill in my chest like a snow globe with a cracked base and no off switch, shaking with every breath.
On the table, they lay the wreath again, now as centerpiece, candles stuck in its brittle bones, wax already dripping like melted hours,
Nobody mentions how it fell, nobody mentions how I’m shaking, nobody mentions how your place is still set by accident and nobody has the guts to clear it,
We hold hands to say grace, words fumbling over gratitude and togetherness while you hover just beyond the chandelier’s reach, grinning at the hypocrisy,
Under the glow of fake cheer and string lights, I make a private wish, not for a miracle or a second chance, just for one more dance on the frozen porch, under a wreath that refuses to stay nailed down.