fix-ate (aka oh yeah i forgot about poetry)

I’ll tell you that when I was a little girl I loved this one Christmas tree ornament.
It was pearl colored, and a perfect sphere and I insisted that it hang three branches below the angel at the top in perfect line with it so I could stare straight at it whenever I entered the living room at the right angle

My sister had a favorite one too, and she put hers on a bottom branch so it wouldn’t break,
I don’t remember what color hers was or what shape or if there were trimmings in gold but I do remember it was her favorite

But oh my pearl colored pretty little ornament, it was gleaming like it should, making the bells and the broken nutcrackers, everything around it, look prettier just because it was there

And I swore to myself it was magical and that what it did was trap the light of the room inside of its sphere so it could outshine everything else, and it did, it did everything I wanted it to

On a goose-colored Thursday it fell and broke into three ugly pearl colored pieces, taking down two or three nutcrackers with it, and you know I was so heartbroken I had to be persuaded not to cancel Christmas

There’d be no more fun without the bauble nestled above us all, suspended, not doing much at all but reminding us of its existence and that was enough for me, that was even more than enough, that was really all I’d wanted

And then Christmas followed quickly, I don’t remember much of it, but I do remember that all morning long I pretended I was the light inside its pearly face, I tried so hard to pretend that I think I missed a point of the holiday

And the three broken pieces, I had to throw them out, I didn’t find any light on the inside