Midnight Carols from Below [Wraith]
Children roll into sleep like coins flicked down a bottomless well,
clutching stuffed animals that already know better than to dream,
while the night outside hangs heavy and wrong over the cul-de-sac lights,
as if the whole sky has been dragged down a few inches too low just to hear them breathe.
The house does its normal winter creaks, radiators hissing like tired snakes,
parents humming carols off-key in the kitchen, stirring powdered cocoa into water and regret,
but upstairs the air has a different weight, thick as wet wool wrapped over tiny mouths,
and the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling start to look like exit signs that never lead out.
On the first pillow a boy tosses and mutters, fists clenched around a toy car,
his dream opens on a living room that looks almost right,
tree standing proud, tinsel hanging low like tired smiles,
except the ornaments are eyes that never blink and every candy cane drips a slow, red line down the bark like the tree is bleeding sugar.
The presents are wrong too; they breathe under the paper,
boxes swelling and sinking on the carpet like chests trying not to scream,
tags written in handwriting that almost looks like Mom’s but trails off at the end,
as if whoever held the pen noticed the claws poking through the underside of the lid.
From the chimney something claws its way down with the sound of bones dragged over brick,
not jolly, not soft, no fake beard or ho ho ho to soften the edges,
just a figure in a coat stitched from old wrapping paper and scorched letters to Santathat never made it out of the trash, each “please” and “I’ve been good” burned into the seams like curses.
He smells like burnt cookies and furnace dust and the inside of a long-forgotten church,
eyes like two cracked ornaments reflecting every time the boy lied about being fine,
and when he laughs it sounds like sleigh bells dropped down a well,
metal ringing on stone, echoing until it stops being funny and starts being a threat.
“Got your list right here,” he says, voice thick as chimney smoke,
pulling out a scroll made of old report cards and broken promises,
reading off every fear the boy ever had in the dark while the nightlight tried to hold the line,
then tucking a gift beside his bed: a small black box that hums and hums until it becomes the sound of his own heartbeat trying to run away.
Across the hall his sister curls around her stuffed rabbit like it could shield her from anything,
her dream opens on snow that falls upward,
flakes rising into a sky that looks like the underside of ice,
as though the whole world has been turned over and dunked in cold water just to see who can hold their breath longest.
She sees the tree outside, grown tall and skeletal on the front lawn,
its needles nothing but fine pins, its lights hung like tiny nooses swaying in a wind that never reaches her face,
and around its roots children dance in pajama feet,
eyes hollow but still shining with that Christmas-morning spark that refuses to die even when everything else does.
They compare their gifts in whispers that scratch the air,
one pulls a jack-in-the-box that springs to life with their own face on the spring,
mouth sewn shut with garland, fingers twitching to undo the knots,
another cradles a music box that only plays the sound of their parents fighting in the next room while the television pretends everything is fine.
The girl looks down and finds a stocking stitched to her ankle like an extra limb,
heavy with something that sloshes when she moves,
she reaches inside and feels teeth, not sharp exactly, just too many,
rolling over one another in the dark like they’re trying to chew through her palm just to get out and introduce themselves to the family.
Down in the basement, in his own private darkness, another kid curls against a mattress that smells like old sweat and cheap pine cleaner,
his dream starts with snow globes lined on a shelf,
each one holding a little house like his,
and every time he shakes one, the tiny front door opens and what steps out isn’t a family but all the bad nights given feet and a grin.
The carolers come too, faces pressed against frosted glass,
no songbooks, no mittens, just mouths open a little too wide,
singing verses that rhyme guilt with childhood in a way no radio station would ever dare spin,
harmonies built out of playground rumors and the way the other kids looked away when he cried during the fireworks show last year.
All over the neighborhood the children twist in their sheets like tangled fairy lights,
breathing in smoke that isn’t there yet and hearing footsteps on roofs that don’t hold weight,
as something old and patient walks the rafters,
dragging a sack stitched from their forgotten fears, filling it with the parts of them that still hoped someone would ask what was wrong and stay long enough to hear the answer.
In the heart of the dream stands a sleigh carved from ice that never melts and bone that never stops remembering,
hitched to things that used to be reindeer until they met whatever lives under the bed,
eyes glowing the same color as TV screens at 3am when the whole house has given up on pretending it sleeps,
breath spilling out in clouds that smell like last year’s disappointment.
The driver cracks his whip, which looks suspiciously like a string of burnt out fairy lights,
and they rise into the night, trailing a blizzard of torn wrapping paper behind them,
each scrap stamped with a single word:“Later.” “Busy.” “Maybe.” “Quit crying.” “Be grateful.”
This is how the holiday looks from the furnace level,
where every song you ever hummed under your breath has a darker harmony,
and the line between “I can’t wait for Christmas” and “I can’t do another one of these”is as thin as tinsel and just as easy to snap with one careless tug.
Still, buried somewhere under all that black snow,
a tiny spark tries to survive in each chest,
that stubborn little flicker that insists there must be a version of this nightwhere the tree is just a tree, the gifts are just gifts, and nobody wakes up with claw marks in their memory.
The furnace doesn’t care either way; it just keeps burning,
feeding on letters never mailed and cookies that tasted like ash and unspoken apologies,
waiting for next year when the same children, a little older and a lot more tired,
will close their eyes again and give it another shot at rewriting their winter from the inside out.
Song – “Christmas from the Bottom Floor”
[Verse 1]Kids knocked out on cocoa and cartoons, drooling on a stained old couch,
tree in the corner leaning like it knows it’s been through one fight too much.
Out in the dark something’s laughing through the chimney soot and brick,
not a fat guy with a belly, just an old wound dressed up as Saint Nick.
Wrappings rustle in their dreams, boxes crawling under skin,
you can hear the floorboards whisper, “Yeah, it’s that time of year again.”
[Chorus]Christmas from the bottom floor, way beneath the snow and cheer,
where the stockings carry teeth marks and the bells ring “stay right here.”Underneath the carols, there’s a rumble, there’s a hiss,
this is what it really looks like when the holidays get pissed.
[Verse 2]Upstairs Mom’s still taping smiles on gifts she couldn’t really pay,
Dad’s pretending not to see the stack of bills dressed in red and gray.
In the kids’ heads, trees grow claws and candy canes draw blood,
snowmen melt to show what’s buried right beneath the frozen mud.
They unwrap boxes full of echoes, broken faith and swallowed screams,
hallmark snow outside the window, horror movie in their dreams.
[Chorus]Christmas from the bottom floor, way beneath the snow and cheer,
where the stockings carry teeth marks and the bells ring “stay right here.”Underneath the carols, there’s a rumble, there’s a hiss,
this is what it really looks like when the holidays get pissed.
[Bridge]All they ever wanted was a night that didn’t hurt,
not another silent movie where their feelings eat dirt.
But we wrap it up in glitter, call it magic, call it bright,
while the furnace counts the heartbeats it can harvest in one night.
[Verse 3]Morning hits like cheap perfume, trying hard to scrub the stain,
kids go diving into boxes, shaking off the phantom pain.
Everyone plays “Everything’s perfect,” for the photos and the calls,
while last night’s dreams hang like tinsel from the cracks inside the walls.
Somewhere deep below the floorboards something smiles and bides its time,
it knows the date, it knows the house, it loves a yearly crooked rhyme.
[Chorus]Christmas from the bottom floor, way beneath the snow and cheer,
where the stockings carry teeth marks and the bells ring “stay right here.”Underneath the carols, there’s a rumble, there’s a hiss,
this is what it really looks like when the holidays get pissed.
[Outro]Light the tree, pour the drinks, cue the same old worn-out song,
we’ll keep dancing with the nightmare, call it “keeping traditions strong.”Down below the coals are laughing, counting down till next year’s show,
another Christmas from the bottom, where the pretty lights don’t go.
Ashes in Red, White, and Blue
The park was dressed up like a postcard someone would send to pretend everything was fine,
paper flags taped to trash cans, kids running circles in glow necklaces that would crack and leak down their wrists by midnight,
someone grilling questionable meat over charcoal that smelled like lighter fluid and last summer’s arguments,
while the sky waited, empty and patient, for us to start throwing fire at it again.
On the blanket nearest the bandstand, a veteran sat with his back too straight for that cheap lawn chair,
hands folded like he was holding something that had never stopped shaking,
eyes fixed on the horizon where the nearby highway hummed like distant tanks you could pretend weren’t there,
his wife pressing a plastic cup of lemonade into his palm like a talisman that might hold the night together.
Across the grass teenagers lit sparklers that spat white fire,
drawing names in the air with shaky cursive, the letters breaking apart before anybody could read them,
laughing loud enough to drown the hiss that followed each spark,
as if making noise could keep the dark from listening in on what they were really afraid of.
Parents unwrapped discount fireworks in the back lot behind the school,
knees on rough asphalt, fuses clenched between nervous fingers,
cheap cardboard rockets lined up in spent beer cases like skinny little soldiers headed for a one-way promotion,
instructions written in five languages and none of them “this won’t fix anything, but go ahead and try.”
When the first mortar screamed up into the sky,
the veteran flinched so hard his chair skidded back,
plastic cup tipping, lemonade splashing into the trampled grass like a soft, harmless explosion,
his eyes gone foggy as if the years had snapped in half and spilled him back into a different heat, a different fire.
Around him, nobody turned down the music,
the cover band kept banging out a patriotic tune with the wrong chords,
the crowd yelled “Yeah!” at the glittering burst like they were cheering for a team instead of a chemical reaction,
kids shouted “Do it again!” while the night filled with smoke that smelled too much like bad memories for anyone who knew what to compare it to.
On the far end of the field, some drunk uncle misjudged the angle,
a roman candle tipping sideways just enough to redraw the rules,
the first ball of fire zipping across the grass like it’d found a target it had been waiting on all year,
hitting a cooler dead-on, ice and beer and panic exploding in one ugly fountain that made everyone laugh before they realized it almost wasn’t funny.
Near the curb, a small boy clapped too close to a sparkler,
one crooked hiss kissing his bare wrist,
a bright blister rising like a tiny white flag surrendering under red skin,
he swallowed his tears because “be tough” had been handed down like family silver,
eyes glued to the sky, watching it catch fire in colors we pretend mean freedom.
Somewhere downtown, fireworks mirrored in a hospital window,
over a bed where a nurse adjusted a veteran’s pain drip while the TV played the celebration on mute,
bursts of red and white and blue splashing across his pale legs like they were trying to repaint the scars,
each flash a reminder that the war had never really ended, it had just changed the soundtrack.
In another house a dog clawed the inside of a bathroom door,
heart pounding fast enough to rattle its ribs,
while outside the neighbors shouted, drunk on bravado and cheap patriotism,
lighting more shells because “it only comes once a year” and “let’s make it loud enough to wake the dead.”
The sky finally hit that stage where smoke turned it into a bruise,
clouds smeared with leftover flashes,
spent casings littered the grass like broken fingers,
and the smell of sulphur clung to everyone’s clothes,
the kind of scent you can wash three times and still catch on your cuffs in November.
People packed up their blankets and chairs,
stepping over blackened cardboard and smoldering paper like walking through the remains of a bad decision,
telling each other “that was beautiful” and “the finale was amazing”because there’s a script to this night and it does not have a line for “this feels like we’re applauding our own funeral.”
In the dark after the last echo, the veteran sat in the cooling grass,
through the thinning smoke he could still see tracers instead of fireworks,
hear names shouted as warnings instead of lyrics,
feel dirt under his boots instead of candy wrappers and shot-up soda cans.
He pressed his hands against his ears but it was too late;
the Fourth had already done its work,
torn open the thin scar tissue between then and now and poured red, white, and blue salt straight in,
while the town walked home under a sky that looked like it had been set on fire just to remind them what it costs to keep pretending fire is a celebration.
Song – “Fireworks Don’t Care Who’s Remembering”
[Verse 1]Picnic blankets on a patchy lawn, kids with sticky hands and flags on sticks,
someone’s dad in a faded shirt swears he knows all the words and none of the politics.
Grill smoke crawls up into a sky that’s way too calm for what comes next,
cheap shells lined up in cardboard tubes like they’re about to pass some holy test.
On a plastic chair a soldier stares past the band’s off-key parade,
counting breaths between the booms and all the choices that got made.
[Chorus]Fireworks don’t care who’s remembering, they just burn and fade away,
they don’t know about the bodies or the ghosts they wake today.
All the red and white explosions, all the blue across the scarred-up night,
just a chemical confession dressed up as “we’re doing this right.”
[Verse 2]Somewhere by the parking lot a fuse runs faster than the plan,
one hot streak through the grass and now the brave one drops the can.
Everybody laughs till the cooler blows, ice and beer across their feet,
for a second it’s all chaos, then it’s “man, that was sick, repeat.”The vet is shaking, hands like leaves, hearing mortars, not a show,
but the kids just shout for “bigger ones” because that’s all they need to know.
[Chorus]Fireworks don’t care who’s remembering, they just burn and fade away,
they don’t know about the bodies or the ghosts they wake today.
All the red and white explosions, all the blue across the scarred-up night,
just a chemical confession dressed up as “we’re doing this right.”
[Bridge]You can’t fit a country in a skyburst, can’t fix a wound with a noise complaint,
but we line the streets with folding chairs and pretend the smoke is some kind of saint.
Every boom is somebody’s flashback, every sparkle someone’s last bright scene,
as the crowd sings along to freedom while the shadows fill the in-between.
[Verse 3]When the grand finale finally hits, the sky looks like it’s being shelled,
kids cheer loud enough to drown the part where fear and wonder both get yelled.
Then it’s over, just a dark smear, just the smell and scattered trash,
neighbors joke about the mess while stepping over spent shell casings in the grass.
The vet walks slow back to his car, fireworks still going off inside,
no one sees the way his shoulders cave, how much of him he had to hide.
[Chorus]Fireworks don’t care who’s remembering, they just burn and fade away,
they don’t know about the bodies or the ghosts they wake today.
All the red and white explosions, all the blue across the scarred-up night,
just a chemical confession dressed up as “we’re doing this right.”
[Outro]Pack the flags and grills and coolers, let the smoke drift down the street,
we’ll forget the taste by August, till next year’s shells knock us off our feet.
Fireworks keep their simple promise: flare up bright, then disappear,
leaving us to sit with everything we tried to drown in noise this year.