when the gunpowder settles

the families welcome me as if I am not someone they have just met but a long lost friend that has finally decided to come home and it hurts, to carve my place in their traditions as an outsider witnessing their vulnerable love.

more people hug me than I’ve been held in years, I am fed until I can no longer move, there are wrapped presents with my name in elegant scrawl - I have not believed in Santa for years, but he visits me anyway.

a lanky man tries to bring life to a bonfire that adamantly refuses to catch - the smoke fills my lungs, sinking into my coat like an embrace. I smell it for days after, catching a hint on my skin as I remove my layers.

(I think about his quiet demeanor, the low timbre of his voice, his nimble hands working out chords to Christmas songs - and I quell the whispers of lust, but the dry want has settled in my mouth.)

a mother that is not my own wraps her arms around me, pointing up at more stars than I’ve ever seen in my life.

“you can’t see this in the city,” she says, as her husband points out the constellations, Orion’s belt has never felt closer - I resist the urge to reach out for them because for once I believe I can catch them before they fall.

winter chill has made its way to the steps of this town, wind biting at my face and saturating through my jacket - we scramble down a slope into the woods, towards the gentle noise of trickling water that grows in volume as we reach the banks. the water sweeps over granite, but the peace has settled into my bones.

with each shuddering breath, I carry you across the plains, through the valleys, wade into the waist deep rivers.

there is an entire world that waits for you,

two months?  two years?

where has he tucked my kisses, my hands on his face, the memory of me smiling into his shoulder could he feel how my heart beat quickly under his hand on my chest - did he ever pocket a peal of my laughter to bring back the sun on a future cloudy day

will his body shiver to remember how i tickled the hair at the nape of his neck with my breath i wonder if my name is tucked under his tongue when he gets cold at night, when someone mentions my name around him, like the dead has come back to haunt him

the narrator in this story cannot be trusted. 

perhaps I never stopped being rotten - maybe I was just cutting away the parts I thought should be thrown away.