This Christmas We'll Sit Quietly

Steam plumes upward past my face
from a coffee cup, half-filled,
as a childhood memory
of no great importance
lights an image in my mind.

I'm so small, that I cannot believe
what I will come to be.
Someday.

From bed I have risen
at the first nervous shuffle
of feet outside my door.

Such a tiny heart can pound twice
as hard as you might think.

My voracious eyes seek prey.

I regress to some kind of animal state,
tracking my prey,
following the scent of pine
back to the victim's naked den.

I blissfully kill, maim and mangle,
shredding paper skins
to get inside.

The evidence of my crime is strewn colorfully everywhere,
and I am blissful in the destruction that I have accomplished.

The coffee is good, sweet and bitter, like it should be.
I breathe from the ceramic cup I have had for so long.
Outside, the snow is thick.
And I am warm inside this memory.

Never forgotten, so slowly faded, always loved.