A Ghost At the Back of Your Closet

Christmas is back in its rightful place.

There's snow on the ground in Richmond, Rashka is sleeping next to me, and I am not too many thousands of miles away delivering the kin of strangers.

It is everything I would have given for last year as I sat and cried into my evangelical Christmas dinner.

And yet, something is missing.

I feel it deep down, almost as if my soul is patting its pockets to make sure it didn't leave anything at home. Perhaps its the lack of awkward phone calls from my father. Perhaps its the conscious decision to delete Lovely coming back to bite me.

If my dreams recently have been telling enough, perhaps it both.

Lovely crept into my sleep last night, showed up as my memory of him. I spent most of the day settled in my mind, until I realized that I had simply dreamed it. Even when I delete that old neighbor from everything I can touch, he is still tangled up somewhere in the frontal lobe.

Whatever the reason, the presents are wrapped, the tree is up, and I have six hours to figure out how to feel that genuine sigh I used to get when I was little and I would wake up and it was exactly the right day.

I can't miss two Christmas mornings in a row.

Perhaps waking up in a foreign bed amongst strangers was the wall between childhood and everything else.

At least I still have Rashka and the snow.