Swinging comets for Christmas

I trace my finger

across the face

not of Davey Crockett,

but of the boy I used to be,

sitting up in bed

at four years old

my aunt's pretty face

hovering over me

holding the book

so I can see the pages

can touch each image.

she trying to be a mother

my mother cannot be,

trying to give me a childhood

my mother's madness stole,

All these years later,

you give it back to me

for Christmas in one big wooden box,

a small thin golden key

to a past I forgot I had,

unlocked and overwhelming

my heart aching for it

now that I have found it again

my fingers slowly tracing

those spaces where my fingers

traced long ago,

bringing back Christmas

and snow,

and all those lost souls

who have since gone on,

leaving me here

the way mother, aunt,

uncles left me,

ghosts of past, present

and future,

and only the tiniest chain

to drag behind

me into the next world,

me swinging comets

like Davey Crockett did

(best present I ever got -- even better than the bicycle I blackmailed my family into getting me when I was seven)