an xmas jumble

the child-one cries. her brothers make her cry. it's xmas eve. i am an only only but i do not think that's supposed to happen. or that i'm supposed to bring her a tissue. 

which i would have.
which i don't. 

instead i eat a second piece of apple pie and play with my baby cousins. they giggle over squash and fall asleep face first into pie. 

i am liking this separation. family on the eve. solace on the day. 

i woke this morning early before the cars to the uninterrupted silence of snow, from here cross the park where the boughs hang heavy with white. 

the absence of sound.
the softness of light before dawn. 

you have to get there before everyone does, with their loudness and dirt and shovels and interruptions. paths through the plain. i have always wanted to see the english moors. like unending snow, no footfalls, no evidence. 

you exist without existing. 

still. my first private blanket snow since i came here. the universe gives me the perfect present. i am grateful because the universe is trying to make it right, me being in this city that i hate. 

all right, i say to it, i thought you failed me but you are making it right. you do never fail. we have an agreement. i thought you broke it. i thought you balled up my chi and chucked it out the window somewhere roadside to rot. 

now if everyone will stop telling me the same thing. 

private things kept private. the hawk i see, you don't and i keep it to myself. the soft rose moors of snow in the early morning. writing. whatever your tears were about. widdershins private. i make you keep it yours. 

i do not bear the burdens of your brothers.

private thought: is my perception of my aunt and uncles right, in the way you make me believe? gaslit is such a trendy term. has your paranoia created how i see them despite what i see, child-one?

i have no siblings. i have no one to ask. 

then again i have no one to fight with. 

but my perceptions, are they my own? if we have the same eyes then whose are in my face?