Crooked Cheer and Final Notices [Wreath]
On the cheap beige wall of a rental that already looks tired in November,
Holiday cards crouch in a crooked little flock, corners peeling where the tape gave up halfway through trying to be optimistic,
Snowmen grinning with permanent marker teeth, cartoon reindeer winking like they know something about your browser history,
Gold script wishing peace and joy hovering directly over a three month old electricity notice folded like a white flag that nobody has surrendered yet.
The wall has become a crowded bulletin board of all the lives people think you live,
Glossy families with coordinated sweaters and matching dogs,
A cousin’s kids in front of a tree that definitely cost more than this month’s groceries,
Your friend’s new baby in a tiny red hat who has already accomplished more joy in six months than you managed all year.
Behind the cards, the unpaid bills sit stacked like judgmental elders at a family reunion,
Water, power, internet, that lingering medical thing you still refuse to open all the way,
Each envelope addressed with the kind of seriousness the cards can’t touch,
Stark fonts that don’t pretend to know your favorite cookie or your shoe size,
Only the due date, the balance, the quietly sharpened teeth of interest.
You tape another card next to a red stamped reminder and tell yourself it is an art choice,
Offsetting the harshness of the final notice with a penguin in a scarf throwing snowballs,
Like if you line up enough paper smiles in front of the numbers, they will forget to collect,
Like the universe might call it even because the glitter on that one card got under your nails and into your eyes and still hasn’t come out.
Under the weak lamp that does its best impression of sunlight,
The cards flash their fixed happiness as the room sighs under the weight of late fees and dust,
A string of fairy lights droops nearby, one bulb flickering like it is debating whether to join the shut off notices on the table,
You tell yourself you will fix the bulb, the budget, the gradually sinking couch cushion in January,
Right after the next paycheck that already has a hit list longer than your patience.
One card is from someone who used to kiss your neck in parking lots and swear they would never miss a holiday with you,
Now here they are, printed in glossy ink, arm around someone else,
Smiling in front of a house that clearly has better insulation and a better mortgage,
The inside scrawled with a message that reads like a polite obituary,
Hope you are doing well,
You are not, but you do appreciate the effort.
Another card is from your mother, all caps in her familiar shaky handwriting,
The only one that never bothers with a photo, just a simple winter scene from a discount box,
Inside, a small check folded twice, an apology in paper form, a little emergency boat for the month,
You know it should go to something respectable,
You also know exactly which bill is going to get the quiet mercy of that crumpled kindness while you pretend you are just “catching up.”
At night, when the apartment finally admits it is old and tired and lets the quiet in,
The cards seem to lean toward each other and gossip,
The snowman side-eyes the electric bill and whispers that he has seen worse,
The glitter tree card flirts with the phone notice, promising coverage and connection if someone would just call back,
The unpaid balances murmur to each other like bored cultists, counting the days until they get to shout in red again.
You imagine the bills holding a secret meeting after midnight,
Forming a debt union, electing a past due president,
Delivering passionate speeches about responsibility while you snore on the secondhand couch clutching a blanket that smells like last year’s candles,
The cards, in defense, mount a cheerful coup,
Form a crooked little army of peppermint smiles and cozy slogans,
Their only weapon a stubborn refusal to admit that things are as bad as the envelopes claim.
Somewhere in this paper war, your life is stuck to the wall with dollar store tape,
Pinned between what you owe and what people think you are,
A collage of expectations, failures, and absurd little joys that kept creeping in even on the days you swore you were done,
Like the handwritten note that says “we miss you, come visit,” from a friend who never asks about your finances,
Just wants you on their couch, eating cookies and oversharing about everything but the balances.
You stand there in the middle of the room, socks picking up static from the threadbare rug,
Coffee in one hand, unpaid notice in the other,
Reading a card that calls you “one of our favorite people” with such conviction that you almost believe it,
And for a brief, stubborn second, you are both versions at once,
The disaster who forgot to pay the water on time,
And the person who is still worth sending overpriced cardstock and stamps to,
Somehow both can exist on this wall without canceling each other out.
The holiday music from the neighbor’s TV bleeds through the wall in faint, tinny waves,
Some classic song crooning about chestnuts and goodwill like the world is not on fire and nobody pays late fees,
You roll your eyes, but your lips still move along on the chorus because muscle memory doesn’t check your bank account first,
This is what the season has always been for you,
A patchwork celebration held together with tape and sarcasm,
Tinsel wrapped around overdue notices,
Laughter threaded through the quiet panic of a calculator that keeps adding instead of subtracting.
You add one more card to the gathering, a cheap pack you bought for yourself,
Not to send, just to write on the inside and pretend they arrived from a less exhausted parallel version of you,
You write something ridiculous and kind to yourself in messy ink,
Something you would never dare say out loud in case it sounds too much like hope.
When you are done, you tape that one right in the middle,
Dead center between the worst bill and the brightest glitter tree,
A crooked little prayer made of ink and paper,
A promise that you will not disappear under other people’s expectations or the weight of your own mistakes,
Not this year, not yet.
Outside, the wind messes with the street decorations, knocking fake garlands against metal poles like drunk ghosts trying to get back in,
Inside, your wall looks like a crime scene of joy and obligation,
But it is yours,
Your mess, your cards, your debt, your strange talent for surviving one more season than you thought you could.
You take a photo of the wall with your cracked phone and laugh at how it looks,
Like a mood board for a holiday that never quite gets the budget it deserves,
And you whisper to the crooked cards and the unsympathetic bills,“We all made it to the wall this year. That has to count for something.”