Next December’s Stranger in the Glass [Wreath]
I lean on the windowsill that’s chipped from three landlords ago and two lives I don’t talk about, watching my breath draw soft white ghosts on the frosted pane while the street throws up its lazy Christmas afterthoughts,
and the whole world looks like somebody smeared powdered sugar over a mess they never planned to clean,
cars ticking in the cold, neighbors dragging trash bags of broken boxes and half-dead bows,
while I stand here staring through ice-feathered glass, wondering which version of me will be trapped in this same reflection when next December rolls in like a drunk mall Santa on overtime.
This year’s me has that sag at the shoulders you get from lifting too many almosts and never quite making it off the ground,
eyes outlined with the permanent gray that no filter fixes,
mouth caught between a smirk and a sigh like it can’t decide whether to mock the universe or finally apologize to it,
and fingers drumming a jittery rhythm on the sill, counting down something I can’t name.
Outside, a kid waddles past in an overstuffed coat, arms straight out, hat slipping over one eye,
trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue while her mom wrestles a grocery bag packed with long-expired optimism and store-brand stuffing mix,
and for a second the glass between us turns into a sheet of years,
me on one side, remembering when I believed snow meant magic and not just shoveling and wet socks.
Behind me, the apartment hums with its usual off-brand cheer,
cheap string lights sagging along the wall like tired smiles that still showed up to work,
a single ornament on the plant that pretends to be a tree if you squint and lie to yourself,
sink holding the ghosts of three days of “I’ll wash them after this one last thing,”and somewhere under a stack of takeout menus lurk resolutions that looked brave in black ink last January and now just resemble punchlines.
I see them in my head, those napkin promises and late-night vows,
all the “this year I will”s that sounded like battle cries and turned into background noise,
gym shoes that never met a treadmill, notebooks that never met a second chapter,
hearts that never quite met the courage to say what they wanted when it mattered.
This reflection is a patchwork of every December that hurt and every December that almost healed,
year I tried too hard to be everything, year I tried not at all,
the season I buried myself in shopping lists to avoid thinking about the empty chair at dinner,
the one where I kissed someone under the mistletoe and realized halfway through that the loneliness was still winning on points.
My palm presses against the cold glass, fingers spreading over frost patterns like I’m trying to read braille written by the weather,
and in the blurred double image I can almost see future versions of me stacked behind the current one,
like those time-lapse videos where the same face ages while the background stays exactly as disappointing.
Who will be staring back from this spot next year, when the world has spun its messy circle again,
when the lights are up or down or pawned or replaced,
when some people have drifted, some have stayed, some have vanished without even the decency of a final text?
Maybe it’ll be the me who finally kept a promise to their own heart instead of treating it like a suggestion on the last page of the manual,
jaw set in that quiet way that doesn’t brag but doesn’t apologize either,
eyes tired yet steady, like someone who finally picked a direction and walked until something shifted under their feet.
Maybe I’ll still be here, same chipped sill, same lopsided plant-tree,
same mug with the fading print, hands wrapped around lukewarm hope,
telling myself change takes time while secretly wondering if time just takes everything and calls it even.
I watch a couple hurry by, arguing and laughing inside the same breath,
her cheeks flushed from the cold, his scarf trailing like a flag of surrender,
and the way they bump shoulders tells me they’ve survived at least one hard year without letting it devour the whole story,
and that tiny, stupid detail lights a fuse of envy and something softer beneath it,
a small stubborn wish that next December I’m walking somewhere with someone who knows just how weird my smile gets when I don’t see it coming.
The frost creeps higher as the room cools,
forming little crystal ferns that reclaim the edges of the world,
and I trace one with a fingertip until the heat of my skin cuts a thin corridor through it,
this small vandalism against winter, the smallest proof I can still change something,
even if it’s only the pattern on the glass.
I picture next December’s me doing the same thing,
maybe with ink stains instead of just coffee stains on their hands,
lyrics finished instead of scribbled in the margins,
a body a little more worn but a spine a little less willing to bend for every temporary storm.
I imagine that version remembering this one,
the December where the year sat heavy on my shoulders like a coat I didn’t pick,
where I finally admitted that waiting for life to turn itself around is just procrastination with decorations,
and that tiny admission is a crack, and every change I make is a wedge I drive into it.
I don’t need next December’s me to be heroic,
just a little more honest, a little less apologetic about needing warmth,
still capable of curling fingers around a mug and laughing at stupid memes and saying “no” when “yes” would be easier but wrong,
still able to stand at this window and feel a pulse of curiosity instead of pure regret.
The glass fogs again as I breathe out,
this time I write one word with a fingertip,
not something grand like “transformation” or “destiny” that belongs on motivational posters and underachieving tattoos,
just a name, mine, followed by a tiny arrow pointing forward,
a private vandalism no one will see once the condensation fades.
Next December will bring whatever it wants—late bills, new scars, inside jokes, recovery, disaster, kisses, quiet victories no one else notices—it always does.
All I can promise is that whoever I am then will remember standing here tonight,
face to cold glass, heart rehearsing courage in the dark,
deciding that the person on this side of the window is not finished yet,
and neither is the story.