Paper Cuts On Wrapped-Up Wishes [Wreath]
December creeps in with its usual glitter hangover and obligation, a slow crawl of fake snow in storefronts and emails that all sound the same,
You clear a corner of the living room floor like you are opening an operating theater, roll out paper covered in cartoon reindeer and twinkling lights, give the scissors a name.
The coffee table turns into a battlefield of tape, half-bent gift tags, receipts folded like tiny white flags,
You sit cross-legged among the loot, surrounded by little rectangles of expectation, handles cutting into your fingers from hauling all those branded bags.
Every box in front of you has two contents, and you know it, even if nobody says it out loud when they do the seasonal dance,
There is the thing that was actually purchased, and then the wish that clung to it in the store, a stowaway hope for a second chance.
You pick up the soft package for your aunt, the one you see twice a year and hug like you are patting a piece of furniture,
Inside is a sweater you picked because it was on sale, but under the yarn lives the quiet hope that she will stop griping about everyone and maybe call you once from somewhere that feels secure.
Your cousin gets headphones, the fancy kind that claim to cancel noise, though nothing you can buy ever silences the right things,
Wrapped around those sleek black cups is your wish that he escapes the job that is eating him alive, that he finally cuts loose from half-truth flings.
You wrap them tight anyway, smooth the paper over the swollen corners like you are tucking a child into bed,
Write his name in loopy marker and add a stupid doodle, pretending for a second that this might be enough to upgrade the soundtrack in his head.
There is a children’s doll in a box that squeaks when you move it, a plastic grin frozen wide under the plastic shell,
You know the kid who will rip this paper is living in a house where slammed doors translate the mood better than words, where love survives in takeout cartons and broken cell.
You fold the edges extra clean on that one, double-tape the corners like you can hold her whole world together with tidy lines,
Underneath the ribbon lives a wish that she grows up knowing hugs that do not vanish with apologies, nights where she sleeps without counting the parental landmines.
Your own present pile is smaller, a self-inflicted diet of expectation you put yourself on years ago after one too many “we tried our best” disappointments under blinking threads,
You learned to unwrap on the drive home, in your mind only, lower the bar until any token snack, sock, or mug counts as proof you are not invisible, you are still somewhat fed.
Even now, your name shows up on tags in other people’s handwriting that you trace like braille, trying to find affection between the loops,
Each one a little wrapped-up wish that this year they noticed something real about you, not just “music stuff” or “tired but fine” or “likes spicy soup.”
You wrap something meant for your mother, if she is still using that word this week,
A jar of lotion with a scent she used to wear when she still sang along with the radio instead of fighting the bottle and the ache in her physique.
Under the printed ingredients your wish curls in like another line in tiny font,
That she wakes up one day and chooses more than survival, that the ghost of the woman she was comes back to haunt.
You fold the paper crooked on purpose, leaving one corner with a wrinkle she will comment on,
It is easier to argue about creases than to look at the years neither of you actually had the mother or child you wanted, drawn in neon on some early dawn.
Your fingers collect paper cuts like angry little confessions, each thin red line a tally of every year you have done this ritual,
You suck at one thumb, taste copper and tape glue, realize your DNA is now woven into this wrapping paper in a way that feels almost spiritual.
It makes twisted sense that you bleed a little over these objects,
You are always trying to gift wrap pieces of yourself anyway, smoothing edges, trimming the obnoxious parts, hoping someone accepts the edited project.
Around you, the room feels like a backstage between scenes,
The tree glows patient and smug, already dressed in last year’s hopes, needles catching stray dreams in their evergreen screens.
Under it, a few early gifts sit like squat colorful secrets,
Each box a bribe, a peace offering, a bandage, a joke, a hedge against arguments that might otherwise show their teeth in family banquets.
You remember being small and sending wishes in more obvious packaging,
Letters to the North Pole with uneven lines, catalog pages circled and dog-eared like holy scripture in a religion invented to explain why parents come home late and sagging.
You wrote “please” a dozen times, threw in a “I promise to be good” as if some invisible auditor was keeping a ledger on your soul,
Back then, wrapped-up wishes were easy, paper snowflakes in classroom windows, sugar cookies in the oven, belief that the big man in the suit could fill every hole.
Somewhere along the way the wishes got quieter and heavier and more expensive to ignore,
They started looking like bold moves and hard conversations instead of gadgets from some seasonal store.
You no longer write them in crayon; you hide them in how many times you check your phone, in the gifts you pick, in the way you joke, in the way you dodge questions that cut too close,
You stuff them in envelopes you never send, in drafts you never post, under layers of shiny paper in piles that grow like drifted snow against the front door of the life you almost chose.
Tonight, though, something shifts as you hit the bottom of the last bag and find one extra box with no label,
Plain cardboard, no barcode, weightless when you lift it, not even pretending to be stable.
You do not remember buying it, which is already suspect for a season where every purchase is tattooed on your bank account like a bruise,
You open the flaps and find it empty, perfect, hollow, wide enough for one reckless use.
You turn it in your hands, feel the idea arrive before the fear,
The ridiculous notion of wrapping a wish that is actually yours this year.
Not a passive one, not a “please, universe, be kinder to me” whimper,
Something with teeth and timeline, something that will demand your January and your temper.
You grab a scrap of paper from under the tape dispenser, backside of an old receipt with numbers smeared by coffee and time,
You write it down without editing, one single line that makes your hand shake, a choice that is equal parts terror and incline.
Maybe it is “move out,” maybe “finish the album,” maybe “call the therapist and actually go,”Maybe “walk away from the person who only loves me when I am easy,” maybe “say yes to someone who sees me, even when I am low.”
You fold the scrap small and slip it into the empty box like contraband,
Then you wrap that thing like it is a sacred relic, double paper, triple tape, ribbon tied by a steady hand.
You do not write a name on the tag. You know whose it is. You just draw a little symbol only you will recognize in the mess,
A crooked star, a line that only makes sense from one angle, proof that you put something real in there, disguised in a decoy dress.
You slide it under the tree with the other gifts, where it sits among the scented candles and board games and socks,
A land mine of intention buried in the seasonal props.
No one else will ask what is inside, and if they do you will smile and throw them off the scent with some dumb quip,
But you will know that on some morning not marked on any calendar, you will open it alone and read that line again and decide whether to let it slip.
Outside, somebody’s car passes with music blasting, some cheerful song about snow and love and lights,
The sound filters through the window, diluted, distant, yet still sharp enough to shape the night.
You sit there amid shreds of paper and emptied tape rolls and think about how many wrapped-up wishes are hiding in this one neighborhood,
Every window framing a different kind of hope, some healthy, some poisonous, some misunderstood.
Your own heart feels like one more box stacked in the corner,
Corners scuffed, address label smeared, still somehow traveling along this chaotic seasonal border.
You cannot control who opens which packages this year, who smiles, who fakes it, who pretends they did not need anything at all,
You can only keep tucking small honest wishes into your days like contraband notes, refusing to treat your own soul as a clearance mall.
Later, when the room is cleaned and the bags are shoved back into the closet for their next yearly migration,
You go to bed knowing that somewhere under that tree is a box that holds no product, only a pact, only an invitation.
Wrapped-up wishes will always pile up around you in colored paper and soft lies,
Yet this time, at least one of them is not waiting for a miracle from outside, but pointing your own hesitant hands toward the next sunrise.