Christmas Eve

I have been given the opportunity to become very, very sad.

 

Every person born is afforded the same option. Many take it. It comes in arcane suits asking us to please take a sip. The sip straddles a gulp which is in turn embracing a galloping swallow. I became faint at merely the smell. It danced into my chest like a swaying harem of buxom women. They dropped charms around my sternum and it spread like gleeful galaxies and almost astro-cries. There was a folding inside my face and I felt it until I was completely clay. What would I gain from a taste of this. Could I just touch my lips to the rim of the glass? Could I make myself put it down after that? I don't know.

 

There are things riding around us. There are buses we can catch and others that we maybe can't. I waved my thumb at a passerby, here, in my room on Christmas Eve, and they sped by. Certainty never stops for me. But transgression screeches its breaks with an open door and a bust of fresh air from the door as it hisses open. A man stands there winding me on with his every offer. I am a squinty, scared boy. Opportunity appears in heavy hazes. It pixelates me until I feel like I'm part of the mirage. I feel welcome in the disconcordant speed. I wish you would all leave me here. Heroics never touch anything warm.

 

There was this record that played this axiom: "They're Only Chasing Safety." I wonder what else we are only chasing. Maybe I am only chasing righteousness. I'm maybe only tripping over my own feet. Or maybe everyone's feet. Maybe humanity is trying to trip me all at once and as a result I can walk over all of their feet with perfect poise. The cement is slowly being sucked out of my solid soul. What strength can do that? I can't be sure, but in the empty pockets it leaves behind I feel like I never have.

 

I am the bad one in a whole gym of good ones. I am the unpracticed no one. I leave in my truck and I head to the woods. (I do this in my room on Christmas Eve). When I arrive I pull a gun from a sheath across my back. It is greased and black. The barrell is innocent but in the hands of me. I am not innocent. I am guilty as the bullet that pierces me (who else would I hunt but me). I am a villain wanting to try harder but shuffling trylessly home. I am consoled. I don't deserve to be consoled.

 

I have the opportunity to shine.

But that opportunity doesn't come to visit very often.

 

I'm in my room and it's early Christmas morning.

I am a cripple with a heart wrestling to rise. I am a cotton man, pulled apart.

 

I have the opportunity to be very, very sad.

 

Instead I think I'll be thankful that over miles of myself and my own pathetic attempts at doing life decently, Jesus had the opportunity to do the unthinkable and he did.

 

I'll take this opportunity to say Merry Christmas

 

and, next year things will be different. Things will be better.