Uncertain, she stands cross-armed,
the big box of all that was their Christmas together—
for fifty-six years, seven months, and five days—before her.
Lips pursing, then stretching taut, she inhales,
then sits and slowly unlaps the worn pasteboard flaps
he interlocked last New Year's Day.
How can it be Christmas? How can there be carols
and decorations and joy when her heart is an empty tomb?
Wet, her shadowed eyes catch sight
of a tiny black velvet boot.
Unbidden, a smile plays across her rigid mouth. Memories come
of the many branches from which Kris Kringle's diminutive boot
has dangled, of the many chubby hands
whose grasps have crushed its nap.
Stirred, her fingers follow another sighting: a knobby stone,
glue-studded and smudged with dirt.
Garnished with raveled gold rick-rack, the little rock
lights her heart and spawns a grin.
"It looks like an angel!" their youngest exclaimed
the summer he'd plucked it from an icy stream.
"Does not. It's a ghost!"
"You're crazy. It's a bird!"
And thus the argument ensued.
By Christmas, the only point on which they had agreed was that
the little rock belonged upon the tree—
a recurring testament to that good time had by all.
The rock found a place of honor every year—
its form perennially debated, its legacy now priceless.
Instinctively, her time-mottled, trembling hand engulfs it, embraces
all that lies within this mummied cache—not just the beat-up,
bucktoothed pine cones . . . squashed, shredded cotton puff snowmen...
sagging, threadbare stockings...peeling, bulbous lights—
but the images and indulgences and affinities and affection
laced through every layer.  Inhaling again, with purpose this time,
she grabs one flap of the box on either end and
drags its unwieldy mass into the den. It can be Christmas,
she finally concedes. Not the same Christmas,
not their Christmas, but Christmas nonetheless.
Like the little rock, his legacy will linger, the memories
dangling in her heart like cherished heirlooms.


From She of the Rib (CRM Books, 2006).
Used with permission.