Please Wish Me a Merry

The water trickled over my damaged tongue and I was back. My legs erupted in freshly-shaved goosebumps, and I could hear the quietude of bodies surrounding me. We were in the center of a living being, standing at the mellow eye of its heartbeat and the vehicles were gliding eerily by in luxurious whispers. I boarded an elevator filled with strings wishing us a merry little something and inhaled a flutter of sentiment which reached deep into my belly and poured out of my eyes. The other frames crowded against mine were hearing the same music but with what equipment, I didn't know. Their lack of a date on Christmas eve was not about to rouse my sympathy.

I missed my sister in a green velvet dress and my curly baby brother in a clip-on tie. The elevator doors opened and a black paper three-year-old screamed out at us in Baby Gap Christmas ecstasy. The white layout flattered her rich chocolate skin and I wondered what black babies meant to the people around me. Ashamed at the self-centered sense of relative ownership I felt for this chocolate girl simply because I had ridden the bus to kindergarten with others like her, I realized Christmas was no different. It wasn't mine.