Like every year, I pull the kitchen chair
to the front porch, plastic strands of light
looping my arm, promising radiance
against the early winter dark. You work
late, and I’ve never been one to wait.
Pressed to the window, the children gawk.
The oldest, my own warnings echoed
in her mouth—careful, careful,
(the chair wobbles). Cookies crumble
in the others smiles. Heedless, I reach
to catch the strand on discrete hooks
perched on the porch roof. Finishing
the tail end quickly, hands cold and clumsy,
I beckon the children to the chill and night
and cram the prongs in the outdoor socket.
Then a neckless of darkness and disappointment,
the only lights the stars, and some of them,
as our luck would have it, old, already burnt out
from last year. Last year, when I still had a faith
my body could hold any sort of light that rested there.
