There Are Some Things You Just Don’t Talk About - Judith Stone

[Larry Robinson]

There Are Some Things You Just Don’t Talk About
 
Fresh cut greens. The house sweeter,
This time of year, with cookies
gingerbread, candy canes and cinnamon.
She woke up earlier than her sister, and
They crept downstairs. The tree, a candle in the dark.
 
Christmas morning and the fat tree was flaming
tinsel and multicolored lights, topped
by an electric star, real icicles frozen in the window
like teeth, and snow drifting up like a tongue.
The house was silent with unspoken words.
 
She wanted a different bride doll than the one she got,
One more delicate, with finer features and porcelain skin
A dress with more lace, less satin, more petticoats,
ringlets that were vertical, the blonde paler
than this honey hair that hugged the doll’s fresh face.
Her mother had chosen the wrong one, and
She feels guilty her about her own deep longings.
Her mother is in the hospital still bleeding.
 
She can see that her father was young then with thick
John Kennedy hair, horn-rimmed glasses,
A plaid wool robe and a misleading smile, caught
In the black and white picture, from that day to this!
That Christmas, had to go on for our sake, despite
The still birth.  No words to soften the winter edge to the air.
 
Thinking of it now the emotions are deckled edges,
the memory is an old photograph of her first imperfect Christmas.
Nothing can be done now to make it better but compassion.
 
	- Judith Stone