The Christmas Card
Kim Serafin
I usually do not going looking for the card; I think it looks
for me. The rest of the year, if I try to hunt it down, I will not find it. It
could be June and it would elude me. Even yesterday, I would not have found its
hiding place. But there is something about today, I can feel it. I will hold the
deteriorating paper in my hands and, without fail, my eyes will tear up as I
remember how and why I received the otherwise generic Christmas card.
Although it has been a long, long time since I last loved
you, at least loved you like a girl loves a boy who is not her father or her
brother or her guy friend, the lump forms in my throat. I think to myself: maybe
if I had done it right, I wouldn’t be gripping this card, reading and rereading
the words you’d written until they blur into each other. I think: maybe this
card needs to be thrown out already.
And I have attempted to toss it, but every time, every single
fucking time, I pause just before I rip it in half. I’ll read it once more, I
think, just to remind myself that yes, you once loved me. Remind myself that
yes, one day I'll get a far better card. But this is the card I have now, so I
put it back where I found it, or some other spot—I keep trying to hide it in new
places, forgetting that the best one is probably the trashcan.
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"Polar Bear"
Kristen Kaniewski