Broke

That’s what so many of us say around the Christmas tree, perhaps before, but hopefully after all of the shiny foils have been ripped and the heavy, red stockings dumped. When someone says their gift is, “broke,” I find myself cringing and if my own child is the offensive speaker, I’ll correct by saying, it is broken, not a broke toy, but a broken game. Just as my cell phone is suffering a battery swelling, as the tech at sales, who once worked repairs tells me. Sometimes a growing too big is a breaking as much as a splitting in psyche can be.

I read about Jung’s patient, Van Waveren and how they both believed in past lives, but the Jungian society itself rejects this notion, so strange how attached we get to someone or something staying the same. I always spend $100 on each kid, but that $100 dollar stack gets shorter for what it buys, skyscraper-ing in its fiat climb, to the getting at, of the fat, in which to line, my calfskin wallet.

Christ in Christmas to be broken on crossed-wood sticks, allowing and waiting for the third, the light rays of a careful piercing the way the vinegars do ruin guts from within, to be grateful for the splitting open and melting, the silver tinsels catching the reflections of green and red orbs, a family together sits among the stuffs and boxes, semi-circled-around a cut tree arrowing its point to heaven, while its heavy-leadened limbs sink, to woolen, earth-toned rugs.

Photo credit: Tim Mossholder/unsplash