A Toast to the Unkissed Season

She sits by the fairy lights,

at the edge of the room’s warmth,

watching the tree blink politely.

Outside, the street has the clean confidence of carols,

cold windows breathing cinnamon.

Neighbours carrying parcels as if joy is a skill.

You can learn by repetition.

Her hands remember other Decembers,

the weight of someone else’s coat on the chair,

the easy mess of laughter on the rug.

This year, there is only the slow clockwork of grief

and a silence that smells faintly of pine needles

and old toast.

In the cupboard, tucked behind mugs

stamped with “Merry” and “Blessed,”

a bottle waits: rhubarb vodka,

pink as a bruised sunset,

tart as a thought she can’t swallow.

She is fascinated by it, the way you can be fascinated

by a small sharp object,

the way it catches light.

The way it promises a clean edge

to something that has been blurring for months.

She pours a careful measure,

as if precision might protect her.

It tastes like gardens in bad weather,

like stubborn stalks pushing up

through frost that does not consent.

The television murmurs royal documentaries,

because Christmas always drags history out by the sleeve.

The sad woman leans closer to the screen

as if the past can lend her a spine.

How to be alone without apologising.

How to turn absence into architecture.

How to let the world call it strength.

When it is simply survival

in a beautiful dress.

She raises the glass to no one in particular,

to the kitchen window’s dark mirror,

to the tree’s patient blinking.

Rhubarb vodka warms her throat

with a brave, sour kind of sweetness,

and for one breath.

She does not feel festive.

But she feels here.

Still reigning over the smallest kingdom:

her own heart, unlit, but not surrendered.