Threadbare Cheer [Wreath]
The phone does its little seizure on the coffee table again, screen flaring white-blue in the half dark like a hyperactive firefly that never learned when to quit,
Group chat banner flashes with some cheery title from last year’s optimism, “Holiday Hooligans,” or something equally desperate, and I stare at it, then absolutely refuse to commit.
Behind it the tree blinks all patient and stupid in the corner, multicolored lights reflecting off the window and the dust on the glass like confetti that never got cleaned from last December’s parade,
Outside, snow has turned to gray slush at the curb, tired cars skid through yesterday’s magic, and my brain feels about the same, a dirty, churned-up drift where good intentions and exhaustion trade.
The TV is off for once, not out of discipline, just because the remote fell somewhere between the cushions and I do not care enough to dig past crumbs and old receipts to find it,
A half cup of lukewarm cocoa sweats a ring on the coaster, marshmallows melting into a skin that looks like the top layer of effort I keep scraping off then trying to rebind it.
In the hallway, the coat rack sags with scarves and guilt, things I was supposed to wear to parties I canceled at the last minute with a text about not feeling well,
And the phone buzzes again, needy little hornet, lighting up the dark living room so I can clearly see all the ways I am failing the story they keep trying to tell.
First message, a blurry selfie of the cousins at some ugly sweater party, reindeer noses too big, cheeks too red from cheap punch and central heat,
Someone’s caption jokes about Aunt Linda singing Mariah off key again, there are crying-laughing emojis marching in a row like little soldiers trying to make the moment complete.
Then a photo of the dining table at my sister’s, every dish lined up like contestants in a casserole pageant, foil peeled back to show off cheese and carbs and pride,
My name tagged in the chat with three question marks and a “where are you, you slacker,” like they do not know I am still fighting last year’s tide.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard, cursor blinking in the empty text box like a heartbeat on life support,
I think of typing “On my way,” even though I am barefoot, unshowered, anchored to the couch like it is the last stable piece of my sinking mental port.
Then I consider “Sorry, not up for it,” but the words feel like admitting something bigger I am not ready to hand to the group like an apology dish in the middle of their spread,
So I hit the side button instead, screen goes black, and the silence of my non-response roars louder than anything I might have said.
They start in with the rapid fire, the chat bubbles stacking like snowflakes trying to bury a driveway that nobody bothered to shovel last week,
Memes about hangovers and resolutions, photos of dogs in antlers, half-sincere declarations of “next year will be our year” like hope is something you can pre-order, sleek and unique.
Someone drops a clip of fireworks from a few years back, sound distorted, colors bleeding into each other like our timelines did when the last three winters blurred into one long blur,
And every ding from that little glass rectangle feels less like inclusion and more like a tiny jury asking why I did not show up when they put my chair next to hers.
Across the room the stockings hang from the mantle, a little crooked, one of them still with a name stitched on it that no one says out loud anymore,
The shadows flicker on the wall in time with the tree lights, turning that stitched name into a ghost that stands just behind the others, politely waiting at the door.
The phone buzzes again, vibrations skittering across the wood like a bug trying to climb into my ribs,
Someone posts an old photo of all of us around the table before everything fractured, before funerals, divorces, half-mended fibs.
“Remember when we all stayed up till three playing cards and throwing popcorn?” the caption asks,
I remember the argument after, the slammed doors, the white-knuckled smiles pulled back on our faces like holiday masks.
I could type it, could say “I remember the fight too,” could puncture the nostalgia balloon they are all floating in to keep from drowning in the last twelve months of quiet panic and loss,
But I sit there, staring at the glass that keeps lighting up with everyone else’s bravado, feeling my own fatigue like frost creeping over moss.
Thirty-two unread messages, then forty, then sixty, a growing red badge that feels more like a tally of my absence than a count of their noise,
They send voice notes, jokes, snippets of carols sung off key, somebody shouting “group shot,” their chaos strung together with digital toys.
I pick the phone up, thumb swiping through the backlog like scratching at a scab, feeling both loved and cornered in the same breath,
Every “we miss you” lands like a snowball with a rock in the middle, soft at first hit, then unexpectedly heavy, rolling downhill faster toward some emotional wreck.
Truth is, my bones feel older than the year would suggest, my brain a cluttered attic where every holiday has left a box labeled “later” stacked on the fragile beams,
Every “should be there,” every “only comes once a year,” every “you’ll regret not showing up” has already played on repeat in my own head more viciously than in their public schemes.
What they do not see is how the couch fabric has molded to my shape, how my lungs keep mistaking joy for debt and bracing for the bill,
How the idea of small talk in a room that smells like gravy and old stories feels harder than walking barefoot uphill on black ice to reach a house that might be loving but is never still.
So I do the simplest rebellion anyone can stage in the twenty-first century,
I flip the phone face down, exiling it to the table’s far edge like a tiny exiled city.
The buzzing continues, more muffled now, a caged wasp—but still present,
Like the world insisting on happening without my permission, rude and incessant.
The room softens once the blue glow stops strobing the walls,
The tree light finds its own rhythm, small refracted stars dancing almost tenderly across the old photos framed in their crooked rows and hesitant stalls.
I hear the radiator sigh again, the house settling, the floorboard near the hallway murmuring under its own weight,
Outside a plow scrapes by, metal on ice, loud and clumsy, erasing the last evidence of any footprints at the gate.
I pull the throw blanket higher over my chest like armor made of thrift store threads and the smell of laundry soap that never quite left,
Let my body sink lower into the cushions, gravity doing what gravity does best.
Somewhere, someone lifts a glass and shouts my name over the din, maybe in affection, maybe in accusation,
I answer them in the only language I have energy for tonight—silence as preservation, not damnation.
Eventually the notifications slow to a trickle; group chat joy can only be sustained so long before people pass out on couches or in rideshares,
The last ping I glance at is a photo of my empty chair at the table, captioned with something half-joking about “we saved you a plate,” pretending that gesture repairs.
I could type “Thanks, love you all,” and maybe I will tomorrow when the guilt is quieter and the hangovers make everyone gentler and less aware of who did and did not show,
Tonight I let the message sit there unread in their minds, because the truest thing I can offer them is not one more forced yes, but a no I do not sugarcoat or glow.
The phone finally stops buzzing, the tree hums, the house breathes, and this tired heart beats on in its worn-out chest,
I am not less part of them for sitting this one out; I am just a human in a year that took too much, claiming a small, crooked corner of rest.
In the half dark, with the holiday lights throwing soft color on the ceiling like weak stained glass, I make a private promise that counts more than any group toast in the crowd,
Next time I show up, I want it real, not just my body hauled in like a mandatory prop, but my actual self, unbowed.
For now, the world can keep buzzing on the other side of that little glass door,
I curl around my own pulse, breathe in, breathe out, and let this quiet night be worth ignoring them for.