it's still snowing.

i looked out the window, beyond my own reflection, and saw the snow start to fall, close and sticking, on a day covered with ash.

i've never liked christmas.

as far as i'm concerned, today was just another day without him.

i celebrate family and love and friends who will never forget me and curiousity and wrapping paper and desserts and snowmen and mistletoe and it's a wonderful life. yeah, i'm a sucker for james stewart, but i just don't dig on christmas day.

the snow fell hard and fast as sunlight dispersed into darkness, and not even a star dotted the pinkish sky.

running thick with nightmares and fever, i chewed through christmas morning and painfully, silently drank my cup of tea. the tree was beautiful and twinkling and overwhelming and covered from tip to top with tinsel. i stood there, gifts in hand, presence of mind, and stared. there was a dream about a circus and something with a piece of art, but the details, the speech, and the in betweens, they're fuzzy and elusive, resting in the creases of my pillow and the sound of a door closing. for the life of me, i can't remember what he had to do with it all, but i know there was an animal. and the milk in the tea is making me sick to my stomach, cramping and squeezing, as i unwrap another present blindly. i'd smile, but it hurts too much.

there are moments that happen everyday, somewhere between morning and night, that pull the rock out from the bottom of my stomach and smash it against the back of my teeth. gritty and bearing it, i clench and moan, but those moments when i remember the hospital, or when he got mad at me, or when he rolled over to be closer to me ... those moments, they don't know dates or days. they don't know how to give me a minute to breathe. they don't know the right time or place.

those moments don't know it's christmas.