Christmas Sorrow

A winter wonderland is blurred
by peppermint breath on a window pane,
its draft toys with a young girl's
long blond hair, decorated in ribbons
of red and green.

Eyes of mid-day blue peer through
their own reflection to focus
on the shifting shadows of lonely pine trees
that separate neighbor from neighbor
like barbed wire.
Her mind has many questions of
war and peace, life and death.
Now underneath the Christmas tree,
a mirror image of mothers' perfection,
she watches as uncles, aunts and cousins
come and go, all bearing clichéd tidings
of good cheer.

She wonders why no one every cries
as they gaze through frosted window panes
at the frozen world beyond, as it struggles
to gasp for air. Why they do not weep
for the man in her grandmother's picture
who was born to pay for every
man, woman and child's sin.

Salted tears make their way
down her rosy cheeks as she chokes
on the happiness in smoky air.
Strangers coo her name from over-stuffed sofas,
they try persuading her to shed feelings of misery
like cheap wrapping paper.
With an uncontrollable sob she staggers
into the blinding white of a dead world.

Towards the lonely pine trees she makes her way,
wallowing in heaven's frozen tears.
Small arms, like icicle tipped twigs,
shake as winter's chill sets in.
Thin lips, dried by silence,
whisper prayers into a tall pine's
comforting bark. She prays as she weeps
for all those who never close their eyes
and talk to the father, never thank him
for the sacrifice of his only child.

Adults filled with false wisdom
tear her away from the tall pine's desperate grasp.
Their words of reassurance going unacknowledged
by a young girl's limp body, as her mother removes
ribbons of red and green from long blond hair.
The window's draft comes through in whispers,
calling out to an innocent soul suffocating
under multicolored quilts, their comfort
blindly pushed away by her stubborn mind
as she cries out for love.

In her dreams a man with an invisible face
wraps arms of love and peace around her thirsty body.
Words are never spoken by his blood stained lips
but a message reaches its fingers through the fog
and etches itself on her young heart.
His promise of love sustains her questioning mind
and breathes joy back into her eyes of mid-day blue.